The Royal Mint will mark the 75th anniversary of John Logie Baird’s death with the release of a special 50 pence piece.
The Scottish inventor demonstrated the world’s first working television system on 26th January 1926. He also invented the first publicly demonstrated colour television system, and the first purely electronic colour television picture tube. He died on 14th June 1946.
The 50p coin celebrates the inventor and his creation with a design that captures the key milestones in his life. Design company Osborne Ross have presented these milestones in the form of lines of transmission, which radiate from a central point.
“The equipment that Logie Baird used for his first broadcast isn’t recognisable to our modern eyes as a television, so we looked for another way to express the idea of transmission. A silhouette of the mast at Crystal Palace, together with the radiating circles indicating a broadcast, gave a strong graphic illustration which worked well within the shape of the coin,” said Andrew Ross, creative partner at Osborne Ross.
