The transmission mast above the BBC wing of Alexandra Palace, home of BBC One
from 1936
until the early 1950s, photographed in 2001.Baird Television Ltd. made Britain's
first
television broadcast on September 30, 1929 from its studio in Long Acre, London
via the
BBC's London transmitter, using the electromechanical system pioneered by John
Logie Baird.
This system used a vertically-scanned image of 30 lines — just enough resolution
for a
close-up of one person, and with a bandwidth low enough to use existing radio
transmitters.
Simultaneous transmission of sound and picture was achieved on March 30, 1930,
by using the
BBC's new twin transmitter at Brookmans Park. By late 1930, thirty minutes of
morning
programmes were broadcast Monday to Friday, and thirty minutes of evening
programmes
were broadcast at midnight on Tuesdays and Fridays after BBC radio went off the
air.
Baird broadcasts via the BBC continued until June 1932.
The BBC began its own regular television programming from the basement of
Broadcasting
House, London on August 22, 1932. The studio moved to expanded quarters at 16
Portland
Place, London, in February 1934, and continued broadcasting the 30-line images,
carried
by telephone line to the medium wave transmitter at Brookmans Park, until
September 11, 1935,
by which time advances in all-electronic television systems made the
electromechanical
broadcasts obsolete.
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After a series of test transmissions and special broadcasts that began in
August,
regular BBC television broadcasts officially resumed on November 2, 1936, from a
converted
wing of Alexandra Palace in London, housing two studios, various scenery stores,
make-up
areas, dressing rooms, offices, and even the transmitter itself, now
broadcasting on the
VHF band. BBC television initially used two systems, on alternate weeks: the
240-line Baird
system and the 405-line Marconi-EMI system, each making the BBC the world's
first regular
high-definition television service. The two systems were to run on a trial basis
for
six months. However, the Baird system, which used a mechanical camera for filmed
programming
and Farnsworth image dissector cameras for live programming, proved too
cumbersome and
visually inferior, and was dropped in February 1937.
Initially, the station's range was officially only within a twenty-five mile (40
km)
radius of the Alexandra Palace transmitter—in practice, however, transmissions
could
be picked up a good deal further away, and on one occasion in 1938 were picked
up by
engineers at RCA in New York, who were experimenting with a British television
set.[2]
On September 1, 1939, two days before Britain declared war on Germany, the
station was
unceremoniously taken off air with only two hours' warning at 12:35pm, after the
end
of the broadcast of the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey's Gala Première, various
sound
and vision test signals, and announcements by presenter Fay Cavendish.
(A common misconception is that transmission was cut during the cartoon; it was
not.)
It was feared that the VHF transmissions would act as a beacon to enemy aircraft
homing
in on London. Also, many of the television service's technical staff and
engineers would
be needed for the war effort, in particular on the RADAR programme. According to
figures from England's Radio Manufacturers Association, 18,999 television sets
had
been manufactured from 1936 to September 1939, when production was halted by the
war.
#########################################################################################
BBC television returned on June 7, 1946 at 3pm. Jasmine Bligh, one of the
original announcers,
made the first announcement saying, 'Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do
you remember me,
Jasmine Bligh?' The Mickey Mouse cartoon of 1939 was repeated twenty minutes
later.[3]
An Emitron camera, of the type used to make the earliest 405-line programmes
broadcast on
the channel. This particular example is a dummy constructed for the 1986 BBC
drama Fools
On The Hill, which depicted the early days of the station. Postwar broadcast
coverage extended
to Birmingham in 1949 with the opening of the Sutton Coldfield television
transmitter, and by
the early 1950s the entire country was covered.
Video -Opening of BBC Television Transmitter - Sutton Coldfield (BBC
in the Midlands) - 7th Dec 1949
Alexandra Palace was the home base of the channel until the early 1950s when the
majority of
production moved to the Lime Grove Studios, and then in 1960 the headquarters
moved to the
purpose-built BBC Television Centre at White City, also in London, where the
channel is
based to this day.
###########################################################################################
Video -Odd TV film clips without sound.
Video - Early BBC Childrens Television Ident
Video - BBC clock ident childrens tv
Video - The Voice Of Britain 1935 (documentary) (5pt)
Video -Spotlight on the BBC 1952 Part 1
Spotlight on the BBC 1952 Last Part
Video - This is the BBC 1959 (documentary) (7pt)
Video -BBC colour television experiments - circa 1959
Video - Television And The World 1961 (documentary) (9pt)
Video -Colour bars "Then we return you to the test card (F) and ...
=========================================================
BBC renamed BBC1 when BBC2 launched - Monday 20Apr64
=========================================================
When BBC2 launched on Monday April 20th 1964, widespread power failure in
Central London
prevented the channel from broadcasting its intended schedule from BBC
Television Centre,
which was affected by the power cut.
Instead, the channel launched with a short news bulletin, read by reporter
Gerald Priestland,
from the BBC's news studios in Alexandra Palace, followed by an evening of test
card music
and "BBC 2 WILL START SHORTLY" captions occasionally interrupted by "MAJOR POWER
FALIURE"
captions accompanied by apologetic announcements explaining why people weren't
able to
watch Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate or fireworks from Southend Pier.
Even this short broadcast was dogged with technical difficulties - the first two
and a half
minutes were broadcast in complete silence, with Priestland completely unaware
we couldn't hear him.
BBC 2's first scheduled programme was in fact Playschool, broadcasting the
following morning.
A second "launch" programme, which featured the now famous scene of presenter
Denis Tuohy
blowing out a candle in the darkened studio was shown as part of the news
bulletin later
in the evening, which is just as well as it's now folklore that someone had
forgotten to
put hands on the studio clock for the intended first night!
Video -BBC continuity clips from the 1960's Part 3
Video - BBC 2 continuity Late Night Line-Up
Alexandra Palace
(1936 - Closed 1981)
Video - Birth of Television 1936 (documentary) (8pt)
Video - The Magic Rays of Light: The Beginning of Television (documentary) ( 5pt)
Video - A BBC Experimental Colour Transmission 1957 (documentary (4pt)
Video -That's Television Entertainment 50 Years of BBC (1986)
Dinosaur TV - Save Our Forgotten British Heritage (David Moore)
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