Electromechanical Techniques

Electromechanical techniques were developed from the 1900s into the 1920s, progressing from the transmission of still photographs, to live still duotone images, to moving duotone or silhouette images, with each step increasing the sensitivity and speed of the scanning photoelectric cell. John Logie Baird gave the world's first public demonstration of a working television system that transmitted live moving images with tone graduation (grayscale) on 26 January 1926 at his laboratory in London, and built a complete experimental broadcast system around his technology.

Baird further demonstrated the world's first color television transmission on 3 July 1928. Other prominent developers of mechanical television included Charles Francis Jenkins, who demonstrated a primitive television system in 1923, Frank Conrad who demonstrated a movie-film-to-television converter at Westinghouse in 1928, and Frank Gray and Herbert E. Ives at Bell Labs who demonstrated wired long-distance television in 1927 and two-way television in 1930.