John Logie Baird

Legacy

Television is now found in every corner of the globe and numbers among the world's most popular pastimes, offering multiple channels covering an enormous variety of subjects. Television standards and technologies have advanced in many ways, but much of Logie's vision remains. According to Ian Logie Baird, the inventor's grandson and curator of television at the National Media Museum in Bradford, "Even in the days of early television he envisaged a world with more than one channel, with two or three or four different channels. And he was also looking at the multi-channel thing going on with radio as well, so he was very in favour of choice for viewers and even different standards as well."

With the switch to digital television, Ian Logie Baird and UK Digital launched a contest to find the oldest television in Scotland so that it could be converted to digital. "Ideally it would be something as old as 1936 when the first electronic TVs came onto the market," Logie said, demonstrating the continuing relevance of his grandfather's work.