EIGHTY-FIVE years after John Logie Baird graduated from the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College with an associateship in electrical engineering, its successor body, Strathclyde University has marked his life-work with the establishment of an Institute for Vision Technology, writes Elizabeth Buie, Edication Correspondent.

The new John Logie Baird Institute celebrates the huge range of applications that Baird foresaw for television broadcasting after his invention started to change the world more than 70 years ago. The institute was opened by his son, Malcolm Baird, who is a Professor of Chemical Engineering in Ontario, Canada, and who himself studied at the Technical College.

The university has also decided that Scottish children now should realise that it was one of their countrymen who invented a machine that has revolutionised global communications. Therefore, the launch of the new institute coincides with the release of The Life and Legacy of Mr John Logie Baird - an interactive CD Rom.

Professor Baird said that creation of the institute was ''a great honour''.

''During the 1960s and 1970s my father was almost a forgotten man. A lot of people, even in Britain, said that mechanical television was not real television. The tide began to turn because of people here in Strathclyde, particularly Dr Peter Waddell, who have been doing research since 1975 into his work.''