Ally Pally

[Mike Watterson]

In the sense of giving the world's first known demo of television in January 1926, then Baird did invent TV. Baird did more than anyone in the UK to make a fuss about TV and promote it.

ONLY in the UK and it was a 20 year old concept of Mechanical TV. The barrier to full electronic TV was a camera. People in other countries were demoing CRT for display when Baird was still promoting mechanical displays.
He didn't invent TV. That's a typical British myth. He adapted a Victorian idea. Also there were certainly mechanical TV demos as early as 1924, maybe even one in colour.

He did develop the nearly live Film to Video system, which rates as an invention. It was used for slow scan encrypted satellite transmission of high resolution spy film to avoid the "Ice Station Zebra" type scenario. The US really did lose a spy film from satellite in the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. Though it seems like an obvious solution to the lack of an electronic camera. Unfortunately Baird's intermediate film was already obsolete due to Philo Taylor Farnsworth and Vladimir Kosmich Zworykin developing the electronic camera using CRT scanning. Though Farnsworth's camera was a technological dead end as sensitivity was a fraction of the RCA/EMI camera by Zworkin and worse as you increased resolution or frame rate.
Baird's mechanical displays were obsolete from the beginning and certainly some Dutch people built CRT based displays at the same period.
The Baird Company eventually had to sideline him due to his obsession.

Mechanical display scanning survived in laser printers (polygon mirror and rotating drum) and laser projectors (two polygon mirrors). But those didn't need Baird's obsession.