Events

• 1926 – The first demonstration of the television by John Logie Baird.

People (Births)

• 1925 – Joan Leslie, American actress (d. 2015).

John Logie Baird

John Logie Baird FRSE (13 August 1888 to 14 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world’s first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electronic colour television picture tube.

In 1928 the Baird Television Development Company achieved the first transatlantic television transmission. Baird’s early technological successes and his role in the practical introduction of broadcast television for home entertainment have earned him a prominent place in television’s history.

In 2006, Baird was named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in the National Library of Scotland’s ‘Scottish Science Hall of Fame’. In 2015 he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame. On 26 January 2017 – IEEE unveiled a bronze street plaque at 22 Frith Street (Bar Italia), London, dedicated to Baird and the invention of television. In 2021, the Royal Mint unveiled a John Logie Baird 50p coin commemorating the 75th anniversary of his death.

Joan Leslie

Joan Leslie (born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel; January 26, 1925 – October 12, 2015) was an American actress and vaudevillian, who during the Hollywood Golden Age, appeared in such films as High Sierra (1941), Sergeant York (1941), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).