75 years ago tonight....

[patricklondon]

The BBC launched a regular scheduled TV programme on the open airwaves in - by the standards of the time - high definition (405 lines!), after years of experiments with different techniques. And here's what you could have tuned in to (if you were willing to pay for a very expensive set):

www.thevalvepage.com/tvyears/1936/tv_schedule.gif



Yes, folks, a demonstration of ironing. And there were repeats, even then.

[bixaorellana]

Wow -- that's a revelation. I thought tv wasn't broadcast until the late '40s.

I guess there is nothing like videotape from that era. What we're seeing on the youtube video must be film, correct?

[patricklondon]

Yes, I would guess that was a newsreel film about the launch. I'm not up on all the technology, but AFAIK it was technically quite difficult to film what the TV camera was actually seeing.

German TV of the time had for outside broadcasts a technique for filming and then transmitting the image on the film. There was a documentary about it on TV a few years ago (the technique allowed plenty of material to survive): once you got past the cheery announcer greeting the viewers with a smile and a "Heil Hitler!", it was interesting that German TV had early developed styles and manners of presentation that look surprisingly modern - voxpop interviews, "behind the scenes" views of great events (necessarily, since they weren't allowed the access for managed propaganda newsreels) and so on.

[mickthecactus]

We had TV in 1952.

[Deleted]

I was reading that there was one hour a week broadcast in France in 1932 (60 lines!). 180 lines in 1935, and the first daily programme started in January 1937 from 8 to 8:30 p.m. There were about 100 private TV sets at that time.

I know that my grandfather bought a TV in 1960 and was so proud because he was one of the first people in the village to have one. And my grandparents were super lucky to have two TV stations, the French ORTF and also Télé Luxembourg.

[patricklondon]

It's amazing that there were experiments so very early, though the mechanical systems must have been very trying. I read somewhere that Nipkow, who invented the disc that was used in the mechanical systems, was able to get some sort of image (albeit of only about 16 lines) in the 1880s, before radio waves were even understood (what he thought he was going to do with the system, I don't know). Apparently, there were some tens of thousands of mechanical sets sold in the US in the 20s and 30s, so the various experimental broadcasters must have had audiences - maybe it was like the early days of the internet.

[patricklondon]

I meant to say, in my family we didn't get a set until 1958, but before that my brother, who studied electronics, built his own set out of an old oscilloscope: one night we were all called in to look at this tiny green screen about 4 inches in diameter and watch a chorus line high-kicking - upside down.

[lola]

I want to watch Happy Days in the Tyrol!

My grandfather first saw TV at the New York World's Fair, 1939.