Today – 14 August – is John Logie Baird’s birthday. He was born in 1888 in Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire. Not only was he one of the inventors of the mechanical television and inventor of the first publicly demonstrated colour television he also invented the first purely electronic colour television picture tube. Baird’s early technological successes and his role in the practical introduction of broadcast television for home entertainment have earned him a prominent place in television’s history.

On 26 January 1926 he gave the world’s first demonstration of true television before members of the Royal Institution and other visitors in an upper room in Frith-Street, Soho. John Logie Baird was born on 14 August 1888 in Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland, the son of a clergyman.

In 1927, his television was demonstrated over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow, and he formed the Baird Television Development Company. (BTDC). In 1928, the BTDC achieved the first transatlantic television transmission between London and Hartsdale, New York and the first transmission to a ship in mid-Atlantic. He also gave the first demonstration of both colour and stereoscopic television.

In 1929, Baird started regular 30-line mechanical broadcasts.

First ever photo of a TV image