Contrary to misconception, Baird did not stop at 30-line, mechanical black-and-white TV. Before he died in 1946, he had developed a television system which is more advanced than any system in use today: all-electronic, 1,800-line, three-dimensional colour TV.

During his career, he also patented the world’s first mechanical recording and playback system, the Phonovisor - plus the forerunner of radar, the Noctovisor, and what is acknowledged as the world’s first patent for fibre-optics.

Baird was so far ahead of his time that, even from beyond the grave, his inventions still provide the inspiration for a new glasses-free, stereoscopic/3D imaging system, currently being developed in Glasgow by Dr Peter Waddell and a team from the University of Strathclyde, in partnership with US-based Ethereal Technologies.

According to Waddell, Baird is the only pioneer who deserves to be called the "inventor" of TV. "Baird was the great innovator and pace-setter in television," says Waddell. "He was the first to demonstrate it, and the leader when he died.

"Other figures like Farnsworth made great contributions, but compared to Baird, they all had tunnel vision."

It’s not just Scots like Waddell who acknowledge Baird’s achievements - the Americans have also widely recognised Baird as the driving force behind television. When Baird went to New York in 1930, he was welcomed by the mayor with a motor-cycle escort and a pipe band, and hailed as "the inventor of television". In 1931, the New York Times listed the 100 "most outstanding inventions of the last 80 years", and the last entry states: "1926: JL Baird sends recognisable television image over a wire."

Baird also upstaged the Americans on several occasions. On 7 April, 1927, Bell Laboratories demonstrated television in America for the first time, using 1,000 men to send signals 200 miles between Washington and New York. Six weeks later, Baird responded by broadcasting signals from London to Glasgow (more than 400 miles apart), with seven assistants and a telephone line. On 9 February, 1928 he made the first broadcast across the Atlantic.

The image of Baird as a failure was recently repeated in the New Yorker magazine in an article by Malcolm Gladwell, published on 27 May this year. According to Gladwell, Baird died "in misery", having "tried and failed to produce mechanical television".

Baird did not die in misery. After a lifetime spent battling with illness, as well as big business, he died on the brink of his greatest achievements, having persuaded the British authorities to adopt his proposals for post-war TV, based on his masterpiece the Telechrome, the blueprint of modern colour TV, patented in 1944.

Baird’s early systems may have been mechanical, but this was for practical reasons. In the 1930s, cathode ray tubes (CRTs) were unproven, hard to make and highly dangerous. But even though he was a son of the manse, Baird didn’t kneel down and pray for improvements - he set about making them happen.