A D V E N T U R E S   in   C Y B E R S O U N D

BBC Television was the world's first regular high definition television service which began on November the second, 1936, from Alexandra Palace, an old Victorian entertainment building in North London.

Moss, Personal Interview

But before the BBC began transmission, television had to be invented. In this section, I will look at the people who developed television. I will also look at the recommendations put forth by the Selsdon Committee on which the basis for Britain's television services were eventually based. Finally I will talk about the method in which the broadcasting system for Britain was decided.

John Logie Baird

Television Limited was formed in June 1925 by John Logie Baird.

Briggs, Golden Age, 519

This was the world's earliest company that was concerned with television. Baird had first experimented with television in an attic in Hastings in 1923 an 1924. There was little or nothing that he had not read on the subject an so he had the benefit of knowledge of all the successes and disappointments, every experiment that had occurred through the past fifty years

Swift, Adventure in Vision, 27

Baird's first televisor was a very crude affair and was made out of...

"An old tea chest formed a base to carry the motor which rotated a circular cardboard disk. The disc was cut out of an old hat box, and a darning needle served as a spindle. An empty biscuit box housed the projection lamp. The necessary bull's eye lenses were bought from a bicycle shop at a cost of fourpence each"

Briggs, Golden Age, 520

Swift, Adventure in Vision, 31

In need of money, Baird began to seek backers. He began to sell interest in his company and was able to move to London in August of 1924 where he staged a number of demonstrations of his apparatus to the public. Though these demonstrations were viewed with interest by many different people, money was not being offered. It was then that Baird turned to his family for help. So it was in 1925, with backing from relatives, Baird formed the tiny company, Television Limited.

Briggs, Golden Age, 525

Baird then turned to solving the problem of definition in his apparatus. Up to now, all that could be seen were outlines of images. He concentrated on the problem for months until one morning in October of 1925. He looked at the image of the dummy (he was using it as a subject) on the receiving screen and was overjoyed to see light and shade instead of the usual smudge of black and white (Swift, Adventures, 34). He immediately ran out to get a living person to try it on. This was how Baird described it years later...

"I was vastly excited and ran downstairs to obtain a living object. The first person to appear was the office boy from the floor below, a youth named William Taynton, and he, rather reluctantly, consented to subject himself to the experiment. I placed him in front of the transmitter and went into the next room to see what the screen would show. The screen was completely blank, and no effort of tuning would produce any result. Puzzled, and very disappointed, I went back to the transmitter, and there the cause of the failure became at once evident. The boy, scared by the intense white light, had backed away from the transmitter. In the excitement of the moment I gave him half a crown, and this time he kept his head in the right position. Going again into the next room I saw his head on the screen quite clearly. It is curious to consider that the first person in the world to be seen by television should have required a bribe to accept that distinction!"

Swift, Adventure in Vision, 35

Swift, Adventure in Vision, 36

Baird had impressed the Royal Institution and his financial difficulties were at an end. Fresh capital was injected into Television Limited and Baird soon had a true laboratory with a staff. Baird soon began to improve on his apparatus and...

"After successive advances including improvement to his photo-cells the image measured about 4 ins. by 2 ins. and consisted of up to 30 vertical lines..."

Moss, BBC TV, 14

"A range of performances was broadcast form the Baird studio...in London including in July 1930 the first publicly televised play in Britain, 'The Man with a Flower in His Mouth', organised by the BBC"

Moss, BBC TV, 14

Briggs, Golden Age, 536

By 1932, even though Baird had successfully broadcast the Derby live in 1931 and early 32, Baird's Company was not doing very well financially and it was bought by the Gaumont-British cinema chain. Baird was manoeuvred into a less prominent role in the Company. Over the next few years, Television Limited improved Baird's design. A mirrored drum replaced the spinning disc. It was made up of a broad metal band with thirty mirrors around the circumference (Moss, BBC TV, 17). This allowed the transmission of bigger scenes (before the scenes were limited to head and shoulder shots of the participants). The new receivers also had the new mirror drums which gave brighter images measuring about eight by four inches. By 1933, Television Limited's research had improved resolution far enough to allow images of up to 120 and 180 lines and by 1936, after more development, they were able to offer 240 lines of definition which was the practical limit on mechanical scanning.

Marconi - E.M.I.

While most British firms had been experimenting with mechanical television, the big American radio and gramophone companies were experimenting with electronic television. V. K. Zworykin, who had begun to develop electronic methods of picture scanning in 1923, was employed by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. In 1933 Zworykin made a major breakthrough with his invention of the 'iconoscope', a charge storage type of transmitting tube.

Briggs, Fifty Years, 159

The Iconoscope was a camera tube with a screen made up of thousands of light sensitive-silver globules, each one a separate photo-cell (Moss, BBC TV, 19). The receiver was a cathode ray tube. The Iconoscope became the model which, after modifications, became the Emitron Camera developed in Britain by the Electric and Musical Industries Limited (E.M.I.)

Briggs, Golden Age, 567

E.M.I. had been formed from a merger between two record companies in 1931. These companies were the Gramophone Company and the Columbia Gramophone Company. There were historical connections between the Gramophone Company and the Radio Corporation of America (R.C.A.) (Moss, BBC TV, 19). So when E.M.I. began to develop its electronic television process, they had access to Zworykin's early work. E.M.I. also had links with the Marconi Company. In 1919 the Marconi Company of America had been dissolved and the Marconi patents had been given to the Radio Corporation of America, in return R.C.A. had granted rights to its patents to the Marconi Company in Britain. Ten years later, in 1929, the Marconi Company sold all its interests in radio receiver patents and other 'home entertainment apparatus' to the Gramophone Company, thereby indirectly, when it was formed, to E.M.I.

Briggs, Golden Age, 568

In 1934 the Marconi Company joined with E.M.I. to form the private company Marconi- E.M.I. Television Company Limited, thus combining the experience of the Marconi Company in designing high-power transmitters and aerials, with the experimental skills of E.M.I. At first, the new company had worked on mechanical scanners for test transmissions, restricting the use of cathode ray tubes for receivers but by the end of 1932 they were concentrating on electronic systems. In November of 1932, Marconi- E.M.I. invited the BBC to witness a demonstration of high definition television....

"In December 1932 Ashbridge reported with guarded approval of what he had seen. The E.M.I. apparatus, he stated, differed considerably from the Baird System: in particular, there were three times as many lines per picture and twice as many ictures per second. Definition was much better than with the Baird system and flicker greatly reduced."

Briggs, Golden Age, 570

"...involved transmitting two sets of twenty-five pictures each second. The first set, consisting of the 'odd' lines, 1,3,5, etc was transmitted in 1/50 second followed by the other set, the 'evens' also broadcast in 1/50 second. the two sets together made up the 405 line picture."

Moss, BBC TV, 19

In May of 1934, the Postmaster General appointed a television committee, made up of seven members of the Post Office and the BBC. They were instructed to...

"...consider the development of television and to advise the Postmaster General on the relative merits of the several systems and on the conditions under which any public service of television should be provided."

Paulu, British Broadcasting 237

Paulu, British Broadcasting 238

The Committee recommended that a high definition station be set up in London as soon as possible with the two most promising methods of transmission broadcasting in alternative weeks. First one system in one week, then the other system the next week.

Paulu, British Broadcasting, 239

As to who should run the new television service, the committee considered opening the field to private enterprise, but decided that the BBC should be chosen.

"...because the BBC was already providing the national radio or wireless network...it would be appropriate for it to undertake the television service."

Moss, Personal Interview

Deciding:

"...when the system was launched in November 1936 there was a toss of the coin to see which of the two systems would go first. Would it be the Baird system or the Marconi-E. M. I. system. And the Baird system won the toss of the coin. That was towards the end of summer, early Autumn of 1936. Then as experimental programmes continued, the shortcomings of the Baird system became very clear. So they weren't certain what to do having given a commitment to start with the Baird system they didn't like to go back on their word, but they they thought what we'll do is have a duel inauguration. So they had the inauguration by the Baird system first of all and then they repeated it half an hour later with the Marconi-E. M. I. system."

Moss, Personal Interview

Moss, BBC TV, 20

In accordance with the Selsdon Committee's recommendations, the two systems were alternated experimentally even though this put a great strain on both engineers and producers.

"...it required four types of cameras - three for the Baird and one for the Marconi-E. M. I. system - and three transmitters - one video transmitter for each, and a shared sound transmitter.

Paulu, British Broadcasting, 241

Moss, BBC TV, 23

The results of the competition between the two systems was planned to be announced in April of 1937, but the Marconi-E.M.I. system had proven so superior to the Baird system that in February the Postmaster General announced that henceforth all television transmissions would use the Marconi- E.M.I. system.

"...the last Baird transmission was in the end of January 1937 and thereafter the Marconi-E.M.I. 405 line electronic system was the one adopted by the government and thus the one that is used by the BBC and in fact the BBC didn't close down it's last 405 line transmitter until the beginning of 1985 that was because an overlap between the 625 system which began in 1964"

Moss, Personal Interview

The initial regular BBC television service lasted from January 1936 to September 1939, the outbreak of World War II. During this time, the BBC broadcast a wide range of programmes including: Variety shows, cartoons, talks, plays, opera, newsreels and fashion parades, but the greatest triumph was the televising of the Coronation procession of King George VI in May of 1937. Estimates of the viewing audience varied between 10,000 and 50,000 people.

Moss, BBC TV, 23

At the outbreak of World War II, television transmissions were shut down for the duration of the war.

"On the morning of 1 September 1939, 'Black Friday', as the German bombs were falling on Warsaw, Birkinshaw, the engineer-in-charge at Alexandra Palace, received a message at ten o'clock that the transmitter - a perfect aircraft direction finder - should be closed by noon. The last item to be televised...was a Mickey Mouse film."

Briggs, First Fifty, 171

Briggs, Asa. The BBC : The First Fifty Years, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985

Briggs, Asa. The Golden Age of Wireless, London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Vol. 2 of The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom

Moss, Nicholas. BBC TV Presents a Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration, London : BBC Data Publications, 1986

Moss, Nicholas. Personal Interview. 13 June, 1991

Paulu, Burton. British Broadcasting, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956

Paulu, Burton. British Broadcasting in Transition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1961

Swift, John. Adventure in Vision : The First Twenty-Five Years of Television, London : John Lehmann Limited, 1950

Source: The Unnoffical Guide to the BBC, Copyright 1996 - Researched by Trevor Worthy, (This page is not published by, nor has any connection with, any official BBC resource)

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