John Logie Baird

The son of a Scottish minister, John Logie Baird, (1888-1946) is known to us today for developing the world's first working television system. However not all his inventions were as successful. An inventor from a young age, as a boy Baird installed not only a telephone exchange in his father’s manse, but also a system of electric lighting, even entangling passing traffic in the wires. Later on he was forced to resign from his post of a supervising engineer for an electrical supply company in Glasgow when he apparently blacked out half of the city following a failed attempt to manufacture diamonds from coal dust. The Scot also invented an unsuccessful cure for piles which left him in severe pain for a week. A more profitable innovation was his 'Baird Undersock', damp-proof socks for cold Scottish feet, from which Baird earned a fair few pounds.