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- Home
- the old site
- British Association Lecture, Leeds, 1927
- John Logie Baird in America, 1931
- Television in 1932, BBC Annual Report, 1933
- The Wonder of Television, 1933
- Television To-day and To-morrow, 1939
- The Televisor: Successful Test of New Apparatus 1926
- Next We'll See to Paris, 1927
- Transatlantic Television in 1928
- How Stereoscopic Television is Shown, 1928
- Baird's Trip to Trinidad in 1919
- Alice, Who art Thou? An old mystery
- The Man with the Flower in his Mouth, 1930
- Televising the Derby, 1931
- Televising the Derby, 1932
- H.G. Wells and J.L. Baird
- What was Early Television Actually Like?
- 1932 Television Demonstrated in 1952
- Crystal Palace Television Studios
- Television on the West End Stage in 1935
- What did JLB really do in World War II?
- High Definition Colour Television, 1940–1944
- John Logie Baird—the final months, 1945–1946
- Life with an Inventive Father, 1985
- Down the pub with John Logie Baird?
- A Personal Journey, 2000
- The Making of JLB: The Man Who Saw The Future, 2002
- John Logie Baird the innovator
- John Logie Baird and his Contributions to Television
- Print versus Television: from Baird to McLuhan
- SMPTE and IEEE recognitions of JLB's work
- Television at the 1939 New York World's Fair
- Four Key Players in Early Television Development
- Terry-Thomas and the Baird Portable
- University of Strathclyde exhibition, 1990
- Malcolm Baird looks back on 90 years of UK television
- Television—75 years after Alexandra Palace
- The Farnsworth Invention Saga
- Television, Radar and J.L. Baird, 1923–46
- Baird Television Ltd. and Radar
- Television and Me—The Memoirs of John Logie Baird
- Book and Film Reviews
- Other Television Inventors & Links
John Vassos (1898–1985)
by Iain Logie Baird
John Vassos
Vassos was forced to leave his homeland in 1915 after drawing political cartoons of Turkish officials for his father's newspaper in Constantinople (Istanbul). After serving in the British Naval Support Systems during World War I, he immigrated to the U.S. He studied art and illustration with John Singer Sargent in Boston, but soon gained favor as a magazine illustrator for publications such as Harpers and The New Yorker.
Vassos' first foray into industrial design was in 1924, with a lotion bottle that quickly became more popular as a hip flask during Prohibition. A later milestone was his 1933 design of the ubiquitous Peevy turnstile that's still in use in many subway stations. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, he helped to form the American Designers' Institute and became its president.
During this period, he began working under contract to RCA, and ably assisted the company in the design and promotion of their 1939 and 1940 lines of consumer televisions. Vassos' only known television design marketed during the post-war period is the RCA 621TS, which he designed circa 1941. Delayed by World War II, this set was sold for a short period in 1946. Despite its streamlined cabinet, it did not sell nearly as well as the larger, squarish RCA 630TS, which is most often considered North America's first post-war television.
An advertisement for the RCA model TT-5 'Television Attachment'—one of the sets designed by Vassos for 1939.