So decided Jarvis Cocker in the closing lines of Bar Italia, the final, perfect track of Pulp’s 1995 masterpiece Different Class. The famous Frith Street cafe is a local landmark, frequented by everyone from Italian immigrants to adventurous tourists, from Kylie Minogue to David Bowie, and, by night, red-eyed shift workers and the clapped-out clubbers of Cocker’s song. It’s been dishing out espressos for over 60 years, and hardly ever closes its doors. Bar Italia is a place so steeped in tales that a recent 2000-word feature in The Independent deigned to leave unmentioned what is perhaps the most historic event to take place in the building. This was where the 20th Century was invented.

On January 27, 1926 John Logie Baird and a small delegation from the Royal Institution crowded into the rooms above what is now Bar Italia. Baird was to give the first public demonstration of his ‘televisor’, a device for transmitting moving images. The learned audience watched as Baird cranked up the cumbersome apparatus, before narrowcasting the world’s first ever television programme – the jerky motions of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Baird then transmitted images of a moving face from one room to another.

That the Scotsman had just demonstrated the most important medium since the invention of the printing press was not immediately appreciated. The Times reported on the event in less-than-breathless terms: “It has yet to be seen to what extent further developments will carry Mr.Baird’s system towards practical use,” it noted the next day. A year on, and a certain scientific journal waxed ambivalent on the nascent technology:

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Baird’s invention, of course, went on to become the centrepiece of almost every living room in the developed world. A blue plaque above Bar Italia notes its birthplace.

As Blur, that other great Britpop band once sang: “Give me coffee and TV…History”.

See other instalments from this series on the Google Map._