The antenna or array was invented by Shintaro Uda of Tohoku Imperial University, Japan, in 1926, with a lesser role played by Hidetsugu Yagi.However, the name Yagi has become more familiar, while the name of Uda, who applied the idea in practice or established the conception through experiment, is often omitted.

Yagi filed a patent application in Japan, without Uda's name in it, and later transferred the patent to the Marconi Company in the UK. Incidentally, in the US, the patent was transferred to RCA Corporation.

Yagi antennas were first widely used during World War II in radar systems by Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. After the war they saw extensive development as home television antennas, as in the picture above.

Ref: Wikipedia