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—— ON THIS DAY ——
NOVEMBER 2, 1936
Alexandra Palace, London, England
90 years ago
The BBC Television Service, launched from Alexandra Palace in north London on November 2, 1936, the first regular high-definition television service in the world.
At three in the afternoon on November 2, 1936, the BBC Television Service began transmitting from a converted wing of Alexandra Palace, a Victorian exhibition hall on a hill in north London chosen because its height gave the aerial good coverage across the city. It was the first regular television service in the world broadcasting at what was then called high definition. The opening programme featured speeches, a newsreel, and a variety show with singers and dancers.
The audience was tiny. Receivers cost roughly as much as a small car, and estimates of the number of sets capable of picking up the signal at launch run to a few hundred. Coverage extended only to London and the surrounding area. The service had also been set up as a competition: two incompatible systems, one mechanical from Baird Television and one all-electronic from Marconi-EMI, alternated week by week so that the BBC could decide which to keep.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
Television, the broadcast medium whose first regular service began at Alexandra Palace in 1936 and which went on to reshape politics, entertainment, advertising and domestic life worldwide.
The contest did not last long. The Baird system used a spinning disc and an awkward intermediate film process, needed its performers to work in a sealed, overheated booth, and could not move the camera freely. The Marconi-EMI system used a fully electronic camera tube and 405 lines, produced a better picture, and could be operated like a film camera. In February 1937 the BBC dropped the Baird system. John Logie Baird, whose demonstrations in the 1920s had done more than anyone's to make the public believe television was possible, had lost the standard-setting fight to a rival technology.
The service ran for less than three years. On September 1, 1939, two days before Britain declared war on Germany, transmission was shut down abruptly in the middle of a cartoon, because the transmitter signal could have guided enemy aircraft toward London. The equipment at Alexandra Palace was redirected to wartime work, including jamming German navigation beams. Television returned on June 7, 1946, reportedly resuming with the same cartoon.
What followed was growth of a kind few had predicted. The coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 pushed set ownership sharply upward in Britain, as families bought or borrowed receivers to watch it. Within a generation, television had become the primary way most people in industrialized countries encountered news, sport, drama, and advertising, and it rearranged domestic life around a schedule. The 405-line standard launched in 1936 stayed in use in Britain until 1985. Alexandra Palace kept broadcasting in various capacities for decades, and the studios where the first service began are preserved.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
It was the first regular high-definition television service anywhere. Other experimental broadcasts had come before, but the service launched at Alexandra Palace set the pattern of scheduled programming to a general audience that every later broadcaster followed.
It settled the technical direction of the medium. The side-by-side trial of the mechanical Baird system and the electronic Marconi-EMI system ended within months in favour of the electronic approach, which is the basis of all television that followed.
It began a transformation of public and domestic life. Within a few decades television had become the main channel through which most people experienced news, politics, sport and entertainment, rearranging household routines around a broadcast schedule.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
The BBC Television Service launched on November 2, 1936, to an audience of perhaps a few hundred households, running two rival and incompatible systems in alternate weeks to see which was better. One was dead within four months. The service was shut off entirely in 1939 and came back in 1946, picking up where it left off.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“This is direct television from Alexandra Palace.”
— Announcer Leslie Mitchell, opening the BBC Television Service, November 2, 1936
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the launch of BBC television, the rival Baird and Marconi-EMI systems, the wartime shutdown, and how the medium grew afterward?
