Dead end
Whilst it's true that Baird was the first to publicly demonstrate television, like Edison he wasn't an inventor so much as a refiner of ideas and a shameless self-promoter. Electromechanical systems were a technological dead end and that was widely realised within 2 years of Baird's demonstrations.
There were a number of people around the world working on systems using Nipkow discs and they all had the same problems with synchronisation. The BBC system was one of the widest trials and viewers seldom got more than a few minutes of viewable pictures at a time.
The father of Television as we know it is Philo Farnsworth and it was his work which made people realise that electromechanical systems were impractical. The breakthrough was his Image Dissector in 1926 and elimination of all mechanical components (CRTs were already well known) which was closely followed by a bunch of related camera and electronic developments that mostly bypassed the UK thanks to continued concentration on trying to make electromechanical systems work.
(Does concentrating on pushing dead-end technologies in the face of demonstrably better ones sound familiar?)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
