Let’s watch first images broadcast on TV

More than 90 years ago, a group of sciences, including Scottish inventor John Logie Baird, developed a technique to send moving pictures through the air.

They said at the time, “We have lit a candle that will never go out”, referring to their mechanical TV before it lost out to an electric one.

The first transmission of a live human face was achieved by Baird in 1925, but his efforts were greeted with ridicule and apathy as people never thought that his invention could launch a revolution in communication and entertainment.

William Taynton was the first person to appear on television and made television history when he was asked by John Logie Baird to help him in this historic broadcast.

A few years later, William Taynton said of his initial TV debut, "I remember very clearly how one afternoon while I was working in Mr. Cross's office in Firth Street, Mr. Baird, who had his laboratory above us, came running downstairs in a very excited condition, and almost pushed me in front of him into the laboratory and got me to sit in front of his projection lamps.” 

While Baird is famously credited with inventing the medium of television, he was only the second person to appear on screen.

AG/AG