Born on 14 August 1888 in the town of Helensburgh on Scotland’s west coast, John Logie Baird would grow up to become one of Britain’s most celebrated inventors, responsible in part for a whole new industry.
Showing early signs of ingenuity, he rigged up a telephone exchange to connect his bedroom to those of his friends across the street.
He was educated at Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, where he undertook a series of engineering apprentice jobs as part of his course.
Dogged by ill health while living in industrial Glasgow, he was rejected as unfit for the forces at the outbreak of the First World War.
Instead he served as a superintendent engineer of the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company, where his skills in engineering were able to grow.
After the war and keen to set up his own business, Baird moved to the south coast of England and applied himself to creating a television, a dream of many scientists for decades.
Working out of his workshop in Hastings, by 1924 Baird managed to transmit a flickering image across a few feet – but his invention still needed much development.
On the evening of 1st October 1925 Baird then concluded a series of tests using the latest light-sensitive system that he had devised. The next day he fitted the device and overhauled his equipment, and placed a rather dilapidated ventriloquist’s doll in front of the screen.
On his previous tests the dolls head would come through on the receiving screen as a white blob with three black blobs marking the position of the nose and eyes. But this time the doll, nicknamed Stooky Bill, appeared as a recognisable image, with shading and detail.
On 26 January 1926 he gave the world’s first demonstration of true television before 50 scientists in an attic room in central London.
As his techniques advanced Baird was able to demonstrate television over a distance of 400 miles, and by 1928 he had made it transatlantic.
However, by the 1930s Baird’s mechanical system was rapidly becoming obsolete as electronic systems were developed, chiefly by Marconi-EMI in Britain and America.
Although he had invested in the mechanical system in order to achieve early results, Baird had also been exploring electronic systems from an early stage.
Nevertheless, a BBC committee of inquiry in 1935 prompted a side-by-side trial between Marconi-EMI’s all-electronic television system, which worked on 405 lines to Baird’s 240. Marconi-EMI won, and in 1937 Baird’s system was dropped.
Baird died on 14 June 1946 in Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex.