It is 125 years since the inventor of television was born, on August 13 1888.
John Logie Baird, from Helensburgh in Argyll and Bute on the west coast of Scotland, was the first person to publicly demonstrate television on January 26 1926.
The extent of Logie Baird’s accomplishments is vast. He also made the first transatlantic TV transmission, gave the first demonstration of colour TV and stereoscopic (3D) television and made the first video recordings.
He also developed high-definition and 3D television in colour and made significant progress with fibre-optics, infra-red scanning and fast facsimile transmission during the Second World War.
His grandson Iain Logie Baird, born in Canada, now lives in the UK and is associate curator at the National Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His main interest, unsurprisingly, is TV.
He explained that Logie Baird managed to stay at the forefront of innovation, leaving much larger companies in his wake. “The cost of developing electronic television was insurmountable by anyone except the wealthiest corporations. So for someone to do it first, they would have to be a major radio corporation or somebody who was very innovative with the mechanical techniques and that was my grandfather,” he said.[Keep reading…]