1888-1946

Scottish Inventor

John Logie Baird is not credited as the inventor of the television, though he did create the first working television set in 1923. He went on to a number of "firsts," including the first color transmission. Yet his was a mechanical rather than an electronic system, and by the mid-1930s it would be rendered obsolete by a far better machine using a cathode-ray tube.

Born on August 13, 1888, in Helensburgh, Scotland, Baird was the youngest of John and Jessie Morrison Inglis Baird's four children. His father was the minister of a local parish church. Baird studied electrical engineering at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, and went on to the University of Glasgow. He never completed his work on a bachelor of science degree, however, due to the outbreak of World War I.

Baird was not fit for military service, but spent...