Ray Herbert G2KU - Tribute Page

Picture courtesy of P Cottrell

This page will contain a full obituary on Ray Herbert G2KU  (1918 - 2005) the historian of the Baird Company well-known for his accuracy and authoritative approach, and life-long enthusiastic radio amateur. He died on Wednesday 20^th July 2005.  R.I.P.

Ray Herbert's Funeral was held at Croydon Crematorium on Friday 29 July at 2.15 pm. The family have requested no flowers but donations can be sent to the St. Christopher's Hospice

Please also see this Web site which is a primary research site about the earliest recordings of television: http://www.tvdawn.com/

Contributions are sought by myself Ray G4FFY (SRCC Secretary) in order that the obituary may be as detailed and as accurate as possible. Please e-mail your contributions to secretary@g3src.org.uk  (remove the extra "@'s") as soon as possible, and also any photographs you may have - thank you.

In the meantime we extend our condolences and thoughts at this sad time to the family and friends.

Picture © of Don McLean

Eulogies at Ray Funeral - Held Friday 29th July 2005 @ 2:15pm, East Chapel, Croydon Crematorium

Bernie Wynn G8TB

I have been asked to say a few words about Ray but I am sure I will not do him justice. I have known him for many years since about 1935 when he was living in Smithamsdown Road, Purley.  Unfortunately at my age recollections appear as snapshots and there are many gaps over the years.  When I first got to know him I remember listening to Australian broadcast stations on a single valve receiver which at that time seemed miraculous.  He was the first amateur station I worked and is the first entry in my log book when I first gained by licence in 1937.

He moved to Hartley Old Road and there he demonstrated his first 30-line television he had built. In those days there were none of our present day amenities, virtually no radio, no TV, few telephones, refrigirators, central heating, etc. So Ray saw these developments to the present day and he helped to bring these about in some measure. He worked for John Logie Baird and I remember he worked on a project for the French Government before the war transmitting TV pictures of and to the earth from aircraft, this was some feat with the crude apparatus at that stage of development. During the war he was installing Radar in military installations.

Throughout his life he was a vary kind and helpful man and a fund of information particularly on early television and when asked a question he could usually come up with an answer.  Fortunately there are many documents and articles he had written so this is not entirely lost. He appeared more than once before the TV cameras, a far cry from his earlier eforts, and was associated with the  Vintage Wireless Museum.  He was a founder member of the Surrey Radio Contact Club and he produced the Magazine for the 50th anniversary of that Club. He also gave talks to this Club and others on the subject of early TV and Baird, etc.

All of you will have your own memories such as sailing in his dinghy and much much more and he will be sadly missed and although of recent years he did not appear too often at the Club there will be a gap which unfortunately canot be filled. I and the world will certainly mourn his loss.

Don McLean with contribution from Professor Malcolm Baird

I first met Ray 23 years ago because of some work I’d been doing in early television. I quickly realised that here was a man of great integrity and knowledge.  He freely gave help and support and was delighted to have someone who showed an interest in those early days. On one occasion, he took my wife and I to see his life-long friend from the Baird Company – Ben Clapp. Ben had been the first engineering assistant to John Logie Baird – who many regard as the inventor of television. It was through Ben that Ray as a school-boy met the great man himself. Baird encouraged Ray in what he should do - and after Ray’s schooling was over, he joined the Baird Company.

Ray’s first job at Baird’s was for the French Air Force. Ray and a small team developed and adapted television hardware to fit in a bomber aircraft. You’ll see a picture of it on the back of the service sheet. The system that Ray and his team designed had almost the same features as those currently in use. The problem was the aircraft – it was slow and didn’t fly very high. One day in the summer of 1939 at Hendon aerodrome, Ray was standing next to the bomber, talking to an RAF sergeant. Ray asked the sergeant if he thought there’d be a war. The sergeant said, “I hope not for your sake – you wouldn’t last five minutes in that thing”.

In his later years, Ray actively sought out and explored the history of his old company and of his old boss. What we - the historians, the museum curators, the researchers, the documentary makers - have benefited from was Ray's tremendous ability; an ability to gather data from the surviving Baird employees, to organise it and to end up with the definitive archive of knowledge on Baird and his Company, preserving part of the nation’s technological heritage.

His memory put most of ours to shame – it was no less than encyclopaedic – and there was no sign of it fading with the years either. Many’s the time I’d ring him up and say, ‘Ray, there’s a picture of a woman on page 302 of the June 1928 issue of such-and-such a magazine. I can’t find any reference to her, who is she?’ 20 minutes later, and half out of breath, Ray would be back on the phone after finding the magazine. He’d say something like “oh, that’s so-and-so. She was only with the company for a few months at such and such a time and married Fred Smith from stores.'

All of us benefited not only from Ray's incredible wealth of knowledge but from his absolute accuracy and authority. Ray published I think over 40 articles and a book packed full of material. All the authors of the most recent books about Baird acknowledge Ray prominently. One of those books was written by Professor Malcolm Baird – John Logie Baird’s son. As he lives in Canada, I asked him if he had any words that he would like me to say on his behalf.  

“Ray spent his many years of active retirement as a leading historian of the life and work of my father John Logie Baird.   He was uniquely qualified for this through his early experience with Baird Television Ltd. and his contacts with former Baird employees.   Geographically he was within a short journey of the places where Baird had worked such as Hastings, Soho and Sydenham.

I first met Ray in 1985 while on a sabbatical leave from my academic post in Canada.   Until then I had been aware of my father’s contributions in an overall sense, but pressures of time were keeping me from learning much of the fine detail.   That first meeting with Ray encouraged me to undergo further education.   We were both professional engineers and had the same ‘no-nonsense’ approach, with all pieces of information traced to their sources, cross-checked and linked as far as possible to form a coherent story.   Four years ago when Antony Kamm and I wrote my father’s biography, Ray’s name came near the top of the list of acknowledgments.

Last but not least, I will always remember Ray’s friendship.  Several times I visited his home in Sanderstead and he and Helena treated me with the utmost hospitality and consideration, realising that I needed a peaceful break in my hectic visiting schedule.   Ray’s passing has been a major blow to his fellow television historians, but we are fortunate to have his sound and video recordings, innumerable articles, and his excellent book ‘Seeing by Wireless’.” 

Malcolm Baird, July 2005

The message is that the television community will miss Ray not simply as a source of knowledge but as a helper, a supporter, a mentor, a teacher, and a friend. Our loss in the television community is significant, but incomparable to the loss that the family and especially Helena are suffering. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them today.

Tributes received by Hon. Sec.

Hello Ray

I was so sorry to hear of '2KU's passing recently. I have happy memories of him, more in the past than the present. My first contact with him was on the air. I was down in Nairobi, Kenya in 1947 doing my bit in the RAF and my father had organised my entry into the world of amateur radio and as I was a wireless op in the RAF there was no need to pass the technical and morse tests. I had at my hands a very powerful rig which conveniently was on 14Mhz and I used it to my advantage, shall we say. I had pleasure in working Ray as I think, my first 'G' and we got into conversation and I was tickled pink that he lived in the Croydon area as I did up to '43 when I enlisted into the RAF. I told him this and he asked for the telephone number of our house , in Shirley, and the folks at home were delighted to hear from him and that all was well with me in darkest Africa!! On my return after the warI set up my first station at Shirleyand from there I contacted Ray again, this time as a local, and he told me all about the other amateurs in the Croydon area and of course, the SRCC.  In later months I met him inperson and together with Ron, G6LX we motored over to the continent and had a smashing holiday taking in France, Luxembourg, Germany and Switzerland. It was when we were sitting in a little Cafe in Luxembourg we were approached by some nut case in broken English, who tapped his nose and said "Deuxieme Bureau", (the French Secret Service) !! I think he had overheard to some extent, our conversations about radio!!. Since then, Ray and I always greeted each other and quietly said, 'Deuxieme Bureau' to each other. He and I also spent some time in his boat 'Kayu' in Devon and Dorset

I think most of us have attended, with great interest, his talks on his days with Baird of television fame before the war.

God Bless you Ray and watch out for the Deuxieme Bureau!!

John Headland G3BFP

Dear Sir,

We too were saddened by the passing of Ray Herbert. He had been a wonderful source of information for us at Transdiffusion.org, where we document the history of broadcasting in the UK. My own article on Baird Television Limited at the Crystal Palace - http://www.transdiffusion.org/emc/baird/bairditv/ - for example would have been impossible without his assistance.

When I was informed of his death, I wrote the following item in our MediaBlog:

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Television Pioneer Dies

We are sad to note the death of Ray Herbert, one of John Logie Baird's co-workers, on 20 July 2005.

Ray Herbert was one of the last remaining former employees of Baird Television Limited, joining the company after it had moved to the Crystal Palace in South London and suffered in the disastrous fire that destroyed the building in 1936.

While Ray was not directly involved in Baird's 30-line experiments in the late 1920s and early 30s, nor in the development that proceeded on 240-line transmissions for use by the BBC Television Service in 1936 (alongside the EMI-Marconi system that succeeded it early the following year), he helped to develop the Intermediate Film technique for additional applications, including installing a system in a French military aircraft for reconnaissance, and the transmitters and other equipment used by Baird for his large-screen, colour, high-resolution and stereoscopic television experiments. Like many television engineers, he worked extensively on radar development during the War.

In his later years, Ray Herbert went on to assemble an extensive archive of photographs and other materials showing the work of Baird and his company through the years from the very earliest experiments onwards, and remained one of the few able to document the period of Baird Television's activities at the Crystal Palace, a formerly widely forgotten aspect of the history of British television. Ray made his materials, and his knowledge, widely available to researchers such as the current writer (making articles like http://www.transdiffusion.org/emc/baird/bairditv/ possible) and his knowledge, support and kindly helpfulness will long be remembered.

Not only has television lost a pioneer; it has also lost a light on the past that illuminated our understanding of the very birth of television in Britain. Ray Herbert will be sadly missed, and we pass our condolences to family and friends.

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Best,
Richard G Elen

Editor in chief, Transdiffusion.org