Scottish inventor John Logie Baird had a lot of ingenious ideas, not all of which caught on. His phonovision was an early attempt at video recording, with the signals preserved on phonograph records. His noctovision used infrared light to see objects in the dark, which some experts claim was a precursor to radar.

But Baird earned his spot in history with the televisor. On 26 January 1926, select members of the Royal Institution gathered at Baird’s lab in London’s Soho neighborhood to witness the broadcast of a small but clearly defined image of a ventriloquist dummy’s face, sent from the televisor’s electromechanical transmitter to its receiver. He also demonstrated the televisor with a human subject, who observers could see speaking and moving on the screen. For this, Baird is often credited with the first public demonstration of television.

See the story at IEEE Spectrum.