100 Years Since the First Recognizable Television Image Was Transmitted

On October 2, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird made history by transmitting the first recognizable moving image of a human face. The subject was William Taynton, a 20-year-old office worker who, decades later, would recall the moment that marked the birth of television.

Although scientists had been experimenting with image transmission since the mid-19th century, it was Baird—working with salvaged parts like bicycle lamps, scrap wood, and biscuit tins—who achieved the breakthrough. His setup used a spinning disc, photodetectors, and intense light to scan and reproduce images line by line.

Taynton remembered being rushed into Baird’s makeshift Soho laboratory on that October day. The crude equipment generated such heat that he could barely withstand sitting in front of it. “I really stopped as long as I possibly could until I just couldn’t stop any longer,” Taynton later told the BBC. Still, his brief effort produced the world’s first true television picture. For his trouble, Baird handed him half a crown—what is remembered as the first “television fee.”

The image was grainy and crude, but it moved. When Taynton suggested it wasn’t impressive, Baird replied, “That’s the first television, and you’ll find that it’ll be in all the homes throughout the country, and in fact, right throughout the world.”

Just months later, in January 1926, Baird gave the first public demonstration of television. Though his mechanical system was eventually replaced by more advanced technologies, his pioneering work laid the foundation for modern broadcasting.

In 1951, five years after Baird’s death at age 57, a blue plaque was unveiled at 22 Frith Street, Soho, where the breakthrough occurred. By then, televisions were already becoming fixtures in homes across Britain. Less than two decades later, in 1969, millions worldwide would watch the Apollo 11 Moon landing live—fulfilling the very vision Baird had predicted.