John Logie Baird, television pioneer, was born

John Logie Baird was born on August 13, 1888, in Helensburgh, Scotland, the son of a local minister. A sickly child who became a restless inventor, he tinkered his way through false starts before fixing on the puzzle that would make his name: sending moving images by wire and radio.

Working with scavenged parts—lenses, tea chests, biscuit tins, sealing wax—he built a crude mechanical scanner. On January 26, 1926, he showed it to members of the Royal Institution in London, in what is widely credited as the first public demonstration of a working television system.

His apparatus looked like junk; what it transmitted was the future.

Baird pressed on with color and even early outside broadcasts, and over his career held 178 patents. Though electronic systems later eclipsed his mechanical approach, he is remembered as one of television’s true pioneers. He died in 1946.