ONE of the more popular Scottish tea towels bought by natives and tourists alike is that old favourite with the words ‘Wha’s Like Us’ emblazoned it.

You know the one – it has a list of Scottish inventors and what they invented, showing how Scots more or less made the modern world.

One of those named is John Logie Baird of Helensburgh, inventor of the television.

Except that if you travel abroad, or just use Google, you will find that other countries claim the invention of television as their own achievement.

Americans are taught that Philo Taylor Farnsworth invented television – they are rarely taught that a Russian immigrant to the USA, Vladimir Kosmich Zworykin (1889-1982), is also credited with the invention and was known in his lifetime as the ‘Father of Television’. Farnsworth (1906-1971) was a good old country boy, raised as a Mormon on a farm in Utah, and his story fitted the ‘American dream’ story better than Zworykin so it’s Philo T that many folk in the USA believe to be the inventor of the machine that undoubtedly changed he world.

Though modern Russians are learning about him, the Soviet Union never claimed Zworykin as their own, largely because he visited the USA after the Revolution and never returned, not least because the anti-Bolshevik movement that he supported was defeated and its leaders shot by firing squad in 1920.

Both Zworykin and Farnsworth did hugely important work in developing television, the former creating the iconoscope which was the first practical video camera, and the latter developing an all-electronic television which was the forerunner of today’s television system. Both were also involved in a huge patents fight over the right to ‘their’ invention that took until 1939 to settle, with Zworykin’s employers RCA having to pay Farnsworth for the use of ‘his’ invention.

Without any doubt whatsoever, the first man to actually design, build and – most importantly – demonstrate a working television system was John Logie Baird. The first television transmission of a moving image took place 90 years ago this month, and it was this great Scotsman who did it, no question.

Born in Helensburgh in 1888, Baird was almost the archetype of an inventor, a child who was fascinated by electricity and mechanical things and grew up without losing his sense of wonder.

His father was the minister at St Bride’s Church in the Clydeside town, and his mother Jessie came from a prominent shipbuilding family, the Inglis.

Baird had a comfortable upbringing as the youngest of four children, being educated at the private Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh, now part of Lomond School. Yet even in a cosy childhood, he suffered bouts of the ill health that was to plague him all his life, and like many a sickly child, he became a voracious reader – at the age of 14, he first read a German book about photoelectric properties of selenium and later credited that with sparking his interest in television.

Baird went from Larchfield to the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, later the Royal College of Science and Technology, and now Strathclyde University. He then went on to Glasgow University, but his studies were interrupted by the First World War and, declared unfit for service, Baird worked with the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company.

After the war, he experimented in many fields, patenting some successful inventions such as a thermal sock, before trying to create diamonds by heating graphite – he failed in that attempt, and switched his attention full time to the ‘wireless’ as radio was then known.

From 1923 onwards, Baird moved to Hastings on the south coast of England and began to devise electro-mechanical systems for scanning images and transmitting them, one of which he demonstrated to the Radio Times early in 1924. He famously gave himself a 1,000-volt electrical shock and not surprisingly, his landlord took umbrage.

Baird moved to London and continued his experiments in his upstairs rooms in Soho. He successfully transmitted silhouette pictures, giving a public demonstration in the window of Selfridge’s store in March 1925. Later that year on October 2, Baird transmitted the first television picture containing different tones – a greyscale image of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

As an entrepreneur as well as an inventor, Baird knew the value of publicity and he invited 40 prominent scientists, some with their wives, and a representative of the press to take part in the world’s first demonstration of practical working television on January 26, 1926. Those in attendance and Baird himself took it in turns to sit before his apparatus and have their picture transmitted to a receiver.

The reaction to this moment of history was phenomenal by the muted standards of the day. There really was huge global interest in the experiment which proved that television was possible.

Baird was well aware of the competition he was facing from across the Pond where Zworykin had the resources of the RCA company at his disposal and Farnsworth was backed by private investors. The latter filed his first patents describing television in 1923, but crucially he did not follow them up with a working prototype and began working on an all-electronic television. Zworykin, by contrast, experimented with several machines but again he could not develop a working television, at least not before Baird did.

The popular misconception is that Baird, just as his contemporary Fleming did with penicillin, went down the wrong road with his invention, and indeed his electro-mechanical system did not last long in the fledgling television industry. After providing the newly formed British Broadcasting Corporation with its initial equipment, the BBC chose to use the EMI-Marconi company’s electronic development that had 405 lines of resolution – much greater than Baird’s 240 lines.

Baird did develop his own electronic television system in time, while he went on to develop a number of television firsts. In 1927, he sent the first long-distance television pictures via a telephone line between London and Glasgow.

The Baird Television Development Company, Ltd. was formed and in 1928, using short radio waves, they achieved the first transatlantic television transmission between London and New York and the first transmission to a ship in mid-Atlantic. He demonstrated colour television, and was given a patent for it in the USA.

Baird went on to make the first outside broadcast, the first sight and sound broadcast, and devise the first television station.

His scanning system for storing images underpins all modern video technology. Baird also devised a type of infra-red viewer called ‘noctovision’ and designed an early fibre-optic system.

His luck was poor, however, the Baird factory at Crystal Palace being destroyed by fire in 1936, shortly after Philo T Farnsworth and Baird had agreed to collaborate on developments, and on the outbreak of war in September, 1939, the Government ordered the closure of all television work, effectively closing down Baird’s company.

Baird had been involved in several secret activities for the war effort, but still worked to improve television.

In 1944, he gave the world’s first demonstration of full-colour electronic television.

In 1931, Baird had married the South African concert pianist Margaret Albu, and the couple had two children, Diana and Malcolm. The latter became a chemistry professor and nowadays lives in Canada.

Baird’s fragile health suffered badly from overwork during the war, and he died from a stroke in 1946 at the age of 57.

He never received a single honour from the Government during his lifetime, but his place as the real inventor of television is secure, despite what you might hear across the Pond.