A century ago, on 2 October 1925, the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird successfully transmitted a recognisable moving image of a human face. The original TV star was a young office worker, William Taynton, who returned to television 40 years later to tell the BBC about that dramatic moment.

Scientists had been working on the invention of television as far back as the 1850s, but it took a lone maverick working with salvaged bicycle lamps, scrap wood and biscuit tins to make it a reality. Before his big breakthrough, John Logie Baird was a serial inventor who enjoyed mixed success. Plagued by ill-health for most of his life, the son of a clergyman was declared medically unfit to serve in World War One.

Instead, he began work for an electricity company while retaining a fiercely entrepreneurial streak. Inspired by a short story by his idol, science-fiction writer HG Wells, he attempted to make artificial diamonds out of carbon by using huge amounts of electricity. He succeeded only in knocking out part of Glasgow's power supply. As for a disastrous homemade haemorrhoid cure, it was a textbook example of the type of activity that would have future television presenters warning, "Don't try this at home."

Despite these setbacks, Baird managed to find some commercial success. With leftover capital from the sale of his socks and soap businesses, he rented modest premises in Hastings on the south coast of England in 1923. The sea air proved to be good for his weak lungs, but his working environment was a health-and-safety nightmare. He set up a laboratory to begin his television experiments, improvising his apparatus from scrap materials such as an old tea chest fitted with an engine. At the centre of Baird's system was a large disc spinning at high speed to scan images line by line using photodetectors and intense light. These signals were then transmitted and reconstructed to produce moving pictures. When he succeeded in transmitting a silhouette, the decades-long dream of creating television moved into focus.

After Baird was burned by an electric shock in his Hastings laboratory, it was time for him to move to the bright lights of London. He rented a flat above a business at 22 Frith Street in Soho and set up a new laboratory. His mechanical device emitted such fierce heat that it was difficult for humans to withstand the intensity. In his experiments, he had to use a ventriloquist's dummy that he nicknamed Stooky Bill. But on 2 October 1925,........

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