October 2, 1925

John Logie Baird

Baird transmits recognizable television images with tonal gradation

The first face the apparatus rendered clearly belonged to a ventriloquist's dummy — a painted head could endure lighting that made a person recoil.

Stooky Bill, then a clerk from downstairs

On 2 October 1925, in his attic laboratory at 22 Frith Street in Soho, London, John Logie Baird reproduced an image with gradations of light and shade rather than the crude silhouettes his equipment had previously produced.

The first subject was the head of a ventriloquist's dummy known as Stooky Bill, whose painted face tolerated the very strong lighting better than a person could. The mechanical apparatus produced a recognisable face with tones and detail.

Baird then hurried downstairs and brought up William Edward Taynton, a 20-year-old office worker from a business in the building.

Half a crown to stay put

When Taynton moved away from the intense lamps the picture disappeared. Baird paid him half a crown — two shillings and sixpence — to remain in position, and Taynton's recognisable face then appeared on the receiver.

The reported image rate was five pictures per second. This was mechanical television using rotating scanning discs, not the later fully electronic form.

Sources disagree on the line count: several technical and biographical accounts say 30 lines, while the Science Museum's reconstruction and some later accounts say 32.

A private test between two rooms

Nothing was broadcast. Transmitter and receiver stood in Baird's own laboratory, and the widely cited public scientific demonstration came at the Royal Institution on 26 January 1926.

The "first television" label depends on defining television as a recognisable live image with tonal gradation; earlier systems, Baird's included, had already transmitted silhouettes and crude shapes.

His biographers note that the precise final adjustment responsible for the breakthrough is unknown.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Sources consistently support 2 October 1925, but disagree on the precise line count. Several technical and biographical sources say 30 lines; the Science Museum’s reconstruction and some later accounts say 32 lines. The fact sheet therefore does not treat either number as definitively verified for this particular experiment.
The “first television” label depends on defining television as a recognizable live image with tonal gradation. Earlier systems, including Baird’s, had already transmitted silhouettes and crude shapes.