"The busy world before you is unfurled": early BBC television
December 29, 2016 1:53 PM   Subscribe

The test transmission from August 1936 is shown in the documentary Television Comes to Bradford, followed by a 1986 interview with the singer, Helen McKay. Regular broadcasts began in November 1936. One of the early programmes was a documentary, Television Comes to London. First part is about the work to convert Alexandra Palace into a broadcasting station. From 12.40 the film shows the first night of broadcasting.

Lyrics to "Television" song from the first broadcast.
Description of experimental broadcasts from Broadcasting House in 1932.
Review of test broadcasts, October 1936.
Schedule for opening night.
Interviews with Cecil Madden, "it was a very fine opening week, and I'm jolly proud of it, because we went in with a bang".
The first programmes.
Compilation, 1936-2011 (10m).
posted by paduasoy (6 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Do we know how many televisions were receiving these first broadcasts?
posted by seasparrow at 4:19 PM on December 29, 2016


Not known for sure (they didn't know at the time) but the estimate seems to be around 400. The range was I think 40 miles. By 1939 Kenneth Baily says there were 20,000 viewers (he doesn't give a number for sets), and just over 4 thousand survey responses were completed.
posted by paduasoy at 4:28 PM on December 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


My first impression was that these are kinescope recordings but they don't show any of the distortion and artifacts associated with early TV camera tubes. See for example this early Mr. Wizard clip. Are these exceptionally well recorded kinescope films?
posted by Captain Chesapeake at 4:31 PM on December 29, 2016


Thanks for this - I love early broadcast history, especially in the UK, and could witter on for hours. Haven't seen some of this stuff, so most welcome.

I'll restrict my anecdotage to a couple of related points. As is commonly known, the BBC's early TV service came to an abrupt end - in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon - at the start of WWII. But by then, unknowingly, it had set itself up to alter the course of the war in some peculiar ways.

First, the Alexandra Palace transmitter was only supposed to cover London and the immediate environs. Cambridge is fifty miles away - well beyond the official service area. However, Cambridge was also home to Pye, a company that prided itself on cutting-edge radio technology - and it worked out that there was still some signal making the trip, just not enough to work with the receiver designs of the day. It set out to produce an extra-sensitive TV that it could sell in fringe regions, as much as a demonstration of the company's abilities as a solid commercial proposition. When radar was being developed in the early days of the war, one limiting factor was making receivers good enough to pick up the very weak returns from distant aircraft, and nobody could build designs that worked. Then someone mentioned the Pye TV work, an example was procured and it proved more than up to the job. Full story - and very much more exciting nerdy detail besides - here.

Second, one of the reasons Ally Pally was closed down was through fears that a very powerful VHF transmitter in London would be an excellent homing beacon for German bombers. (It may well have been, but the Thames proved much more useful and completely unjammable.) However, one of the German bomber guiding beam systems, Y-Gerat, used a frequency that coincided with the BBC's television channel from AP, and it was soon realised that the tremendous signal available from the mothballed transmitter could do some serious damage. And so it proved.
posted by Devonian at 6:47 PM on December 29, 2016 [8 favorites]


My first impression was that these are kinescope recordings...

The majority of those clips aren't kines, they're films. Shot and edited on film and then projected onto a TV camera via telecine.

British TV then was either the 240 line Baird mechanical system, or the 405 line "high definition" EMI/Marconi electronic system.
posted by Zedcaster at 6:54 PM on December 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


The presenter in the clip specifies the broadcast is a Baird system broadcast.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:44 AM on December 30, 2016


« Older The diverse patchwork of Southern food styles is...   |   "You aren't offering anything back to the public." Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments