Mass production of TVs in UK ends

The company said the move was forced by "unprecedented economic pressures" and 270 people at the factory in Plymouth, Devon have lost their jobs.

It is understood about 50 support staff will be retained but production of goods has finished.

The union Unite said the factory was the last in the country to still be mass producing televisions, an industry that was started in the UK.

The Baird Corporation, founded by John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor of the TV, was the world's only recognised TV manufacturer at the end of the 1920s, with their Televisor Model B being the first mass-produced, commercially available set.

Andy Bass, managing director of Toshiba Information Systems in the UK, said that centralisation of production "made sense".

He said: "We deeply regret the loss of jobs.

"However, Toshiba has to keep its global manufacturing strategy under constant review in order to compete in a market which has been transformed in recent years by aggressive, price-driven competition. We have 28 years of history with Plymouth, and are indebted both to the people who have worked with us over those years, and to the wider local community."

Iain Baird, television curator at the National Media Museum in Bradford and John Logie Baird's grandson, told the Daily Telegraph the development would have saddened his grandfather.

He said: "He worked his entire life to make sure it was a British invention, a British technology. In general he would have been very disappointed that it had got to the extent that there is no one major British manufacturer or television factory here."