Seeing Across Oceans: John Logie Baird’s 1928 Trans-Atlantic Television Demonstration [Scanning Our Past]

The earliest demonstrations of television in the mid-1920s showed little more than the principle of seeing by electricity, often over no greater distance than between rooms in a building. At the time, ideas from the 19th century centered around mechanical scanning were the only means available to produce television. The advent of the vacuum tube in the early 1920s made it possible for those ideas to be put into practice. This article explores the circumstances and significance of John Logie Baird's achievement of bridging the Atlantic by television in 1928. This is contrasted in technical detail, performance, and social impact with the earlier demonstration of television by AT&T/Bell Labs