The original mechanical television invented by Helensburgh TV pioneer John Logie Baird has been recreated by students at the University of Strathclyde. The model, built by the engineering students, is set to be gifted to Glasgow’s Riverside Museum, with the intention of use in demonstrations for visiting school parties.

Baird - celebrated as one of the great inventors of the early 20th century - was born in Helensburgh in 1888.

He was educated at Larchfield Academy, now part of Lomond School, in Helensburgh and went on to study at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, a forerunner of Strathclyde, before the First World War.

He invented the world’s first working television and worked in other fields of technology, including video recording, fibre optics, radio direction finding and infrared night viewing.

During the war, he also developed a specially designed sock to protect soldiers from trench foot.

The students' TV set shows moving images projected on to a rotating wheel, produced using flashing LEDs and 32 small holes around the disc.

It replicates the device built and demonstrated by Baird in the 1920s.

The model has been produced by students on Strathclyde’s joint honours electrical and mechanical engineering degree, as part of a final year group project.

Susie Little, one of the students taking part, said: “John Logie Baird’s television was very different to the televisions of today but he developed the television when there was nothing like it and that shows his genius.

“We wanted the television we built to be used after our project was finished so that this wasn’t just the end of it. When we contacted the Riverside, they said they’d be interested in taking it on – it’ll be great to see it continuing to be used.

"It was also fitting for us to build it as he studied at what is now Strathclyde.”

Heather Robertson, curator of Transport and Technology Glasgow Museums said: “It’s been wonderful to work with the students at Strathclyde, first because at Glasgow Museums’ Resource Centre, we are lucky enough to have an original Televisor designed by John Logie Baird from circa 1932 and because seeing their finished recreation, made using new materials, is very exciting.

“It is a real bonus to have a hands-on model that school pupils can interact with during educational sessions at Riverside Museum.”