John Logie Baird's primitive television was the first that could "see at a distance." One day in 1925, a startled office boy put down the papers he was carrying, marveling as he watched his image beamed across a London office by Baird’s device.

Baird's mechanical system made the world take notice because he could make it work, broadcasting moving images across the Atlantic while rival Philo Farnsworth had produced only a thin white line across a screen. Scholars may still debate the "real" inventor of television, yet there is no doubt Logie Baird played a significant role.

A Scotsman, Baird successfully demonstrated television before an audience of writers, scientists and engineers in London on Jan. 26, 1926. On March 6, 1927, The New York Times declared, "Baird was the first to achieve television at all, over any distance."

In 1930, the Baird ''televisor'' made a spectacular hit at 10 Downing Street for the first simultaneous broadcast of pictures with sound. Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald watched Gracie Fields sing and declared it "the most wonderful miracle."

Baird and Farnsworth collaborated between 1934 and 1936, improving Farnsworth's 1934 "image dissector" so that it was transmitting twice as many images per second. Even so, Baird’s system was mechanical, whereas his competitors were advancing an electronic system. By 1936, the BBC was trying out the television systems of both Baird and Marconi-EMI. After a few weeks, the electronic system had proved its superiority, and Baird's system was dropped.

In addition to his work as inventor and entrepreneur, Baird played a role in developing secret signaling techniques for the government during the World War II. He was married and had two children.