This unique very early English television receiver (device to receive the wireless television signals to pass onto the viewing set) was made by the noted radio enthusiast V.R. Mills and dates to the second half of the 1920s. In the annals of Television history Vic Mills is immortalised for having helped John Logie Baird achieve his very first flickering TV shadow pictures in 1923 while Baird was living in Hastings. According to the story, while struggling with noise and signal problems on his invention Baird heard about a knowledgeable local radio enthusiast called Victor Mills. Mills helped Baird fix the issues and as a result the pair were able to achieve the very first flickering TV shadow images in the world on Baird’s makeshift viewer. In 1925 Baird moved back to London to refine his invention, but as far as I can tell he maintained a cordial relationship with Mills at least for several years after.
Sadly not enough is really known about Victor Mills as his part in the ‘birth of television’ story lay forgotten and only re-emerged in 1976. Mills eventually gave an interview to Bruce Norman for his 1984 book on the history of TV (‘Here’s Looking at You’), but seems to have shared little further information otherwise until his death in 1988. This receiver was given by Mills to a local enthusiast shortly before he died.
My thanks go to Iain Baird for passing on an interview Vic Mills gave to the Hastings & St Leonard’s Observer (29 August 1936, p. 19) in which he states: “I continued our work, on a much smaller scale, of course, and for some time had a receiving set working. I dismantled it later, however, and returned to wireless….”. I strongly believe this television receiver I’m selling was part of that set described by Mills.
As you would expect for such an early and experimental item this receiver is wonderfully cobbled together from random parts, and even incorporates a potted meat jar from J.Sainsbury’s ! One can just imagine Mills slowly piecing it together and refining the design on his work bench, using new and old parts he has lying around and fashioning what ever else he needed. The individual parts can be dated to between c1924-c1928, but with the newest item being the Varley resistor which came out around 1930. This was a project to tinker with rather than produce in one day, but of course what is lovely in this instance is just how untouched it has remained. It was clearly of strong sentimental value to Mills to keep for the rest of his life.
As the first official BBC test signals were not transmitted until September 1929, we can suppose that before this date Mills was either having to travel to London to test it with Baird’s own close range transmitter, or was trying to tune in sporadically when Baird made some of his legendary bigger national and international tests. After September 1929 the new BBC N London transmitter was reputedly able to reach to the Kent coast where Mills lived. Mill’s apparatus contains both 45m and 35m tuners because at the time the audio and visual elements were broadcast simultaneously but on those different wavelengths. I believe by the early 1930s longer wavelengths were being used instead.
In one sense this item is little more than a home-made radio receiver as the method of transmitting and receiving the signal was theoretically no different to receiving normal radio. However, as both Baird and Mills realised, creating a receiver accurate enough to capture a clear television picture was actually quite a hard feat. It was something that genuinely interested Mills from the start and being able to design an example small enough like this would be helpful too. Sadly we will never know if Baird himself ever advised or worked with Mills on this item.
When one looks at the timeline of TV development then the issue of wireless transmission had not initially been a concern for Baird back in the mid 1920s. He just wanted to get a decent picture and was happy to use wires to send the signal between the apparatus. However wireless transmission would naturally become an important concern for everyone as the 1920s continued. This little television receiver from the very dawn of mechanical television history, is by a noted figure in the narrative and surely has a great story to tell.
This item has not been tested in any way.
