This is taken from The Guardian:

Raymond Baxter
Broadcaster and first presenter of the BBC's science programme Tomorrow's World
by Dennis Barker
Monday September 18, 2006

With his extrovert polish and buoyant optimism, Raymond Baxter, who has died aged 84, did possibly more than any other broadcaster to popularise science and bring new British inventions into the public eye. In 1965, he became the first presenter of BBC TV's Tomorrow's World. He broadcast from Concorde, in its early stages; he introduced the pocket calculator, microwave, and the barcode - and also less likely hopefuls such as a wheelbarrow designed with a ball instead of a wheel. He remained at Tomorrow's World, which attracted audiences of up to 10 million, until, in 1977, a new editor, Michael Blakstad, ushered in an era of more "investigative" reporting.

Glyn Jones, the first editor of Tomorrow's World, had given Baxter the job because his outside broadcast experience, and a capacity to deal with the unexpected, was rare in live studio broadcasting. Colleagues found Baxter the archetypal, unruffled frontman, brilliant at delivering words written by others, although they were not so fulsome about his editorial judgment. A further complication was that Jones had come from the Daily Mirror, which was far from being the newspaper Baxter most favoured. Jones, however, remained of the opinion that Baxter had established himself as a science presenter more firmly than any rival. However, with the onset of the Blakstad regime, Baxter, at 55, had allegedly become a "dinosaur", who vulgarised science by talking about it in a tone that suggested - to one newspaper critic - that he was addressing half-witted foreigners.

Baxter's background suggested little formal connection with science, except that his father was a science teacher. His schooldays at Ilford County High school ended early when the second world war broke out. He became a qualified Spitfire pilot by the time he was 18. Baxter served with 65, 93, and 602 squadrons in Britain and abroad, instructed fighter pilots, and made dive bomber raids on German V2 rocket bases in the last year of the war.

After the war, he auditioned for British Forces Broadcasting in Cairo, and returned to Britain a year later in an attempt to join the BBC, but was referred back to Forces radio for more training. This he did in Germany, finally becoming civilian deputy director of the then British Forces Network. Facilities in Germany were basic and he had to be a jack-of-all-trades. But when he had another crack at the BBC two years later, he was a master of his craft. At least, he thought so, though the BBC insisted he got regional experience as well in Bristol.

Baxter loved motor racing, and competed in the Monte Carlo, the Alpine, Tulip and RAC rallies; he also took part, as a crew member, in the New Zealand Air Race of 1953. As an outside broadcasts reporter, he was a natural to cover air shows and boat races, while his patrician manner also made him suitable for state funerals (Sir Winston Churchill and King George VI) and the 1953 coronation.

He staked his claim as a science populariser in 1958 with a television series called Eye On Research. It showed the possibilities, and, some said, the limitations, of using a keen-eyed and enthusiastic layman to present complicated science. Three years after the launch of Tomorrow's World he left the BBC staff to go freelance - though continuing with the programme - so that he could become director of motoring publicity for the perpetually ailing British Motor Corporation. He was not, however, a natural company man and the arrangement lasted only a year.

A few months before his departure from Tomorrow's World, the gardener on his estate at Denham, Buckinghamshire, took him to an industrial tribunal amid much publicity after being sacked for incompetence. Baxter won the case, but not without cost: he uncharacteristically broke down in tears during the hearing. A year later he sold the estate a moved to Henley.

His own departure from the BBC had, he admitted, also been bitter. He did not include Tomorrow's World in his Who's Who entry, except for the mention of the books he wrote on it with James Burke and Michael Latham. However, he carried on working occasionally for the BBC, covering the Farnborough Air Show many times, and was heard in the BBC's programmes in commemoration of D-Day. He sailed a lot and enjoyed his honours, including an OBE awarded in 2003 and being made a freeman of the City of London.

His American wife, Sylvia, whom he married in 1945, died in 1996. Their children, Graham and Jenny, survive him.

· Raymond Frederic Baxter, broadcaster, born January 25 1922; died September 15 2006

This is taken from the Daily Telegraph:

Raymond Baxter
(Filed: 16/09/2006)

Raymond Baxter, who has died aged 84, was a wartime Spitfire pilot who became one of the BBC television's best-known outside broadcasters, and the first presenter of the popular BBC1 science programme Tomorrow's World.

Baxter's lean, craggy face and emphatic punched sentences exuded the schoolboyish enthusiasm he felt for the up-to-the-minute gadgetry over which he presided for 12 years. Among many "marvels" — one of his favourite descriptions — he introduced to viewers were the electron microscope (1965), the breathalyser (1967), the pocket calculator (1971), and the barcode reader.

With his American wife Sylvia he demonstrated the first video game, a version of table tennis called Pong, and in another edition he gave the signal for live rounds to be fired at an assistant wearing a new bullet proof vest.

He was, said a later editor of Tomorrow's World, "the messenger for the great white heat of technological advance which in the 1960s was going to sort out all our lives". Always preferring the role of "action man", Baxter reported live from the first passenger hovercraft crossing of the Channel in 1966, and made many flights on Concorde, his first when it was still no more than a prototype fuselage.

He said of the "marvel" of hover flight: "We thought it was going to solve everyone's transport problems. But it just turned into a high-speed ferry on one of the most overcrowded waterways in the world. Its exciting amphibian potential was never exploited."

Baxter parted company with Tomorrow's World in 1977, after falling out with its new producer, Michael Blakstad. Blakstad allegedly called the gravel-voiced presenter "the last of the dinosaurs" and Baxter allegedly said he could never work with someone who rode to the office on a bicycle. He retired hurt and bewildered to the comforting calm of his Queen Anne house and 32-acre garden at Denham in Buckinghamshire.

His departure from Tomorrow's World was the second of two traumatic events to afflict him in 1977. A few months earlier he had broken down and wept while giving evidence to an industrial tribunal about the sacking of his gardener, Albert Murphy, for alleged incompetence. Murphy, who was required to leave a tied cottage, claimed unfair dismissal.

The tribunal found in Baxter's favour, but the court appearance and his emotional response left a mark. A year later he sold his estate and moved to a more modest home in Henley, where he lived until his death. He set up a business which made commercials for British Leyland and promotional videos and films for business conferences. He also became Honorary Admiral of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships.

Raymond Frederic Baxter was born on January 25 1922 at Ilford, Essex, the son of a schoolmaster, and educated at Ilford County High School. As a boy his enthusiasms were divided among motor cars, aeroplanes and music. He learned the violin and sang as a boy soprano, but at the tender age of 14 he flew with Alan Cobham's flying circus for 10s 6d a day (about £25 in today's money). He said later: "I've had a love affair with planes ever since."

At 18, he joined the RAF at the recruiting centre at Lords and, disguised as a civilian, was sent with other hopeful pilots to train in Canada and the American Mid-West. He qualified as a pilot and was posted to No 65, a Spitfire V fighter squadron based in Scotland, which mostly dealt with shipping reconnaissance.

In the New Year of 1943, following the Operation Torch landings in Algeria and Tunisia, Baxter was posted to the North-West Africa Air Force, joining No 93, a Spitfire IX squadron covering the First Army, in July. After a year, he was sent home to instruct at No 61 Operational Training Unit in Shopshire; though he had disliked being taken out of active service, he later said that the experience was "just about the happiest six months of my life". Instructing fighter pilots for the last three weeks of their training offered, he recalled, "all the fun of operational flying and the responsibility of leadership without having the enemy around".

In September 1944 he returned to operational flying himself with No 602. This was a Spitfire IX squadron (re-equipped from November with XVIs) which had just been recalled from Normandy. From Coltishall in Norfolk, he was one of the pilots who dive-bombed Germany's V-2 sites. He was mentioned in dispatches for his part in these raids.

Towards the end of the war, while still a serving officer, he got his first job in broadcasting, as an announcer with the Forces broadcasting station in Cairo. He then spent two and a half years as deputy director of the British Forces Network station in Hamburg. He told an interviewer: "It was a complete course in broadcasting — you had to be able to do everything yourself, and to teach other people at the same time." He was finally demobbed in December 1946 in the rank of flight lieutenant.

Back in Britain the BBC took him on as an outside broadcast commentator, specialising in "mechanical sports" — flying, motorcycling and motor racing. The BBC appointed him their motoring correspondent in 1960 and between 1967 and 1968 he was also director of publicity for the BMC car group. He was part of the BBC commentating team on numerous Royal occasions, including the Coronation and the Queen's State visit to Canada. Baxter also covered the state funerals of Churchill and of King George VI.

Baxter's trademark in covering international sporting events was to double as commentator and competitor. He took part in 12 Monte Carlo rallies, and although his team never won he was twice among the highest placed British competitors. He also took part in the Tulip, Alpine and RAC rallies and in 1953 covered the New Zealand Air Race as a member of the crew of a competing BEA Viscount.

Leaving Tomorrow's World marked the end of his regular association with the BBC, but he continued to make screen appearances on special occasions. He covered the Farnborough Air Show many times – his commentary during the 1950s was responsible for inspiring many to take an interest in aviation. He was also involved in events to mark the 50th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation.

In 1997 and 1998 he returned to his old programme for two series of retrospectives, TW: Time Machine, recapturing outstanding moments from the programmes of the 1960s and 1970s. In July 2000 he was invited to Earls Court to participate in the presentation of the first Raymond Baxter Award for Science Communication. To his surprise and delight, he discovered that he was also the first recipient.

Baxter married, in 1945, Sylvia Kathryn Johnson, of Boston, Massachusetts; she died in 1996. They had a son and a daughter.

In the 1990s it was revealed that Baxter was, by marriage, the uncle of the avant-garde American sculptor Carl Andre, of Tate bricks fame – or, as modern art buffs know it, Equivalent VIII (1966, now in Tate Modern's permanent collection). Baxter told intrigued interviewers that he had "total respect" for, if not total understanding of, his nephew's work. Visiting Andre in New York, Baxter asked: "So where is this sculpture?" "You're standing on it," Andre told him