A copy of the earliest book on television, thought to have belonged to the man who invented the device, sold for £1,440 at auction on Tuesday after it was handed in to a charity shop.

Entitled Television, it was published in 1926 and is signed by John Logie Baird.

Experts said the fact that the signature is on the blank half-title, rather than the title page or frontispiece, suggests it was the inventor’s personal copy.

The book was handed in anonymously to the Oxfam bookshop in Morningside in Edinburgh and was sold at Bonhams in London today, reaching well above its estimated price of £800 to £1,000.

It was bought for £1,440, including a buyer’s premium of 20 per cent, by an anonymous purchaser and will remain in the UK with proceeds from the sale going to Oxfam.

Andy Crosby, manager of Oxfam’s Morningside bookshop, said: “It was such a stroke of luck that someone handed this book in to our shop and it turned out to be so valuable – I wish we knew who it was, so we could thank them.

“The whole reason that Oxfam has shops on the high street is to raise money for our work in the fight against poverty around the world, including here in Scotland, so the sale of this book has been a huge boost, and whoever bought it has made a really important contribution to helping people change their lives for the better.”

The book, by Alfred Dinsdale, gives a brief history of TV up to 1926 and ends with a detailed explanation of Baird’s work and inventions, including an account of the first public demonstration of moving silhouettes he gave at Selfridges in March 1925.

Luke Batterham, Bonhams book specialist, said: “This was a fine association copy of one of the earliest books on television and there was quite a lot of interest in it in the run-up to the auction, with inquiries from Britain, America and Europe.

“The author draws heavily on the work of John Logie Baird, one of the founding fathers of television and, as it has his signature in the front, is believed to have been his own personal copy, making it a wonderfully evocative item relating to the invention which, arguably, has had a profounder effect on the 20th century than any other.” John Logie Baird was born in Helensburgh in 1888 and went on to study at Glasgow University.

He later moved to Bexhill-on-Sea in East Sussex, where he died in 1946.