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John Logie Baird was born in Helensburgh, Scotland in 1888. He was plagued by poor health throughout his life but had a keen and inventive mind. His studies at Glasgow University were cut short by the First World War but his weak chest made him unfit for military service so that he worked as an electrical engineer instead. He gave up his job to concentrate on his inventions which included the first damp-proof sock as well as diamond and jam making devices. In 1922 Baird moved to Hastings where he was referred for his health, and he invented the television in 1924. He moved to London to continue his experiments and in February 1928 a television signal was successfully transmitted to New York.
In 1931 he married Margaret Albu and they had one son, Malcolm, and one daughter, Diana. In 1945 John Logie Baird moved to Bexhill, his son stating that moving out of Sydenham in South London to escape the bombing also had the advantage of the health-giving properties that the town liked to claim. Much conjecture exists as to Baird’s wartime contribution – still believed to be ‘classified information’. More inventions were forthcoming and he planned an electronic colour television and a 3D colour receiver. Baird planned to demonstrate his new inventions when the television service resumed after the war but he fell ill and died of pneumonia in 1946, aged 58 years. The Daily Herald of 15 June 1946 commented “One of the last personal memories the world will have of him is a frail, lean man with long, shaggy hair and thick spectacles walking slowly along Bexhill promenade recently, still jotting down ideas with pencil and paper – the absent-minded inventor every inch of him. ‘There goes the man who invented television.’ people would say.” Following his death and that of his mother-in-law his wife and children moved away from Bexhill