Specimen of Baird's 2-colour cathode ray tube for colour television (telechrome tube), 1944.

The only surviving example of John Logie Baird’s Telechrome, the world’s first colour television picture tube. It is a cathode-ray display tube for 2-colour and/or stereoscopic television and was developed between 1942-44 by Baird and only two assistants.

The 1943-44 television committee appointed to coordinate British television after the war (known as the Hankey Committee) recommended that a high-definition (1000-line) colour television system based on Baird’s Telechrome should be implemented after the end of the war. Due to the difficult post-war conditions and Baird’s premature death in 1946 these ambitious plans never materialised. The existing 405-line black-and-white television system developed by EMI in the pre-war period was expanded across Britain. British colour television broadcasts did not officially begin until 1967, over 20 years later.