One hundred years ago today, 26 January 1926, television was first demonstrated to the world in an attic at 22 Frith Street in London’s Soho. Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird, gave the public its first sight of a working, electromechanical television system. He transmitted recognisable, moving greyscale images of a ventriloquist’s dummy, named Stooky Bill, and his assistant, William Tainton, using a “televisor”.
It’s often forgotten that television was a British invention, although Baird’s crude system was subsequently superseded by electronic systems developed by teams such as those at EMI in Britain and pioneers like Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin in the United States. Their high definition electronic televisions with far higher line counts and steadier pictures than the original electro-mechanical design won the race.
London experiments
By 1939 mechanical television transmissions in the United States had been fully replaced by electronic broadcasts. The BBC operated a dual transmission from November 1936 from its transmitter at Alexandra Palace in the heights of North London. Baird’s system competed directly with the all-electronic Marconi-EMI standard. The two systems were alternated week by week.
Baird’s 240-line apparatus was a development of his earlier mechanical television, using an intermediate-film process whereby images were shot on cine film, quickly developed, then scanned for transmission. In contrast, the Marconi-EMI system was based on fully electronic 405-line cameras and Emitron tubes, which offered greater definition, smoother motion and much greater operational practicality.
The decision
Even before the end of the six-month trial period ended, the BBC had decided that the 405-line system was the only viable way forward. Baird’s system was abandoned in early 1937, just 11 years after the first demonstration in Soho.
Despite this ultimate failure, the significance of Baird’s work remained foundational to the concept of line-by-line image scanning and the commercial development of television.
His Soho demonstration showed potential investors, newspapers, and the public that live, remote vision was not merely a laboratory curiosity by a plausible new industry.
Electro-mechanical ingenuity
Baird himself later experimented with electronic and hybrid techniques, including early colour and three-dimensional systems, and he readily acknowledged the limits of purely mechanical scanning. In historical perspective, his achievement was in bridging 19th-century electro-mechanical ingenuity and the all-electronic, CRT-bases systems that dominated communications for the rest of the 20th Century.
Bar Italia
The nondescript building at 22 Frith Street, where Baird rented the attic, is now better known as the home of the iconic Bar Italia, one of the earliest Italian coffee bars in London. Opened in 1949 by Lou and Caterina Polledri, it has remained in the same family and kept much of its 1950s character — Formica counters, gleaming chrome and the sparkling espresso machine.
It was once the hub for the London Italian community, but is now a venue for musicians, clubbers, and insomniacs. Few, however, look above the fascia to see the blue plaque commemorating that day in January 1926 when television made its first impression on the world.
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