In 1925, John Logie Baird transmitted a 30-line television picture of a ventriloquist’s dummy nicknamed ‘Stooky Bill’.

The next year he demonstrated his system to the Royal Institution and to the the Times in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street in Soho, London.

Baird was already working on a means of storing the images, and in 1928 he developed a 78 rpm shellac disc to record and play back his 30-line pictures.

In the 1980s the BBC electronically recovered the pictures from original discs.

The BBC and IBA – then responsible for commercial TV in the UK – collected original equipment, built replicas and used modern electronics to recreate the images stored on Baird’s 78 rpm shellac discs.

Selfridges store in London sold Baird’s Phonovision disc system.

John Logie Baird died 14 June 1946. There have been many reunions of Baird’s original staff and his widow Margaret, hosted in 1986 by veteran broadcaster Leslie Mitchell.

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