Selfridges store in London’s Oxford Street was the unlikely setting in 1925, when Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the first tentative television broadcast.

Shoppers were shown recognisable but blurred images, among them letters printed in white on a black card. It was the fruit of five years of largely solitary labour for Baird.

The editor of the Manchester Guardian, C P Scott, later commented: “Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of it.” Perhaps he was referring to the word rather than the invention.

Eighty-seven years after that first public showing, John Logie Baird’s Canadian grandson Iain gave a glimpse of the future of the medium at the National Media Museum, which the public will be able to see for themselves next month.

From July 28 to August 12, highlights from the London Olympic Games will be shown in Super Hi-Vision in the museum’s Cubby Broccoli cinema.

Mr Baird, curator of broadcast culture at the NMM, thinks this technology, developed by Japan’s Tokyo-based broadcaster NHK with partners the BBC and Olympic Broadcast Services, is the future of television – about 20 years from now.

He said: “For starters, the Super Hi-Vision picture is extremely life-like because it contains 16 times more pixels than current high-definition television.

“A 22.2 surround sound speaker system, a large cinema screen, and the excitement of a live broadcast further contribute to making you feel like you’re actually at an event.

“For those not able to get a ticket for the Olympics, this is without doubt the closest thing to getting your own seat,” he added.

A Super Hi-Vision screen more than 5m wide by more than 3m high will be situated in front of the existing screen in the 100-seat Cubby Broccoli.

Some 103 screenings are planned over the fortnight, all of them free. More than 10,000 tickets for the hour-long shows, featuring the opening ceremony, events from the Olympic Stadium, the Velodrome, Aquatic Centre and Basketball Arena, are available now.

Complicated as it may sound, the plain fact is this – Bradford is one of only three UK locations where this technology is being put through its paces. London and Glasgow are the other two.

It will take a week to set up and test the three tonnes of equipment. Engineers from NHK and the BBC will be on hand to supervise the installation. The cost of all this is being met out of research funds, Mr Baird believes, principally from the Japanese NKH organisation which has been developing the technology.

Each of the screenings in Cubby Broccoli will include Experience London, a glimpse of the capital as it prepares to welcome the rest of the world, a tour of Olympic Park and a view of other London landmarks.

Super Hi-Vision follows a tradition of testing new broadcasting technologies at the Olympic Games, including the first major TV outside broadcast at the London 1948 Olympic Games.

Colour TV came to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, with live satellite transmission across the Pacific. In 1984, the Los Angeles Olympics was relayed for the first time in experimental high definition.

Sixty-four years ago in London, the CPS Emitron camera, one of which can be seen in the photograph of Mr Baird, was at the cutting edge of television transmission technology.

“It picked up detail as never before and was a real breakthrough in analogue television. At the time, there were only 100,000 television sets in the country.

“The Super Hi-Vision camera is about the same size. It’s being tried out in Bradford, London and Glasgow. It’s only suitable for television in cinemas at the moment.”

Television in cinema, of course, is not new. The Beatles in America in 1964 and Muhammad Ali’s ‘rumble in the jungle’ heavyweight boxing battle against George Foreman ten years later, were both filmed for screening in cinemas, Mr Baird added.

The Olympic screenings take place from noon to 6pm from July 28 to August 12. The free tickets are available now. The box office number is 0844 8563797. Tickets must be collected 15 minutes before each screening, otherwise spaces will be re-allocated.