GMHTV - Television Nostalgia

TELEVISION NOSTALGIA

INTRODUCTION
This part of the website is all about a year by year look at the what we watched on television in those years and the ways British television has changed from the 1920’s to the present day. In a few pages you will see most things connected with television from John Logie Baird’s invention of the television set in the mid 1920’s to programmes like The Weakest Link and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? of the present day. All television years are included up to the very present and will be updated as much as possible in the future.

THE BEGINNING OF TELEVISION
The inventor of television, John Logie Baird was born in August 1888 in Helensburgh, Scotland, Baird learned a Calvinist work ethic from his father, a Presbyterian minister. Not inclined toward the clergy or the sea, Baird realized he could do little to support himself in his homeland. Like so many other young Scots of his era, he eventually sought his fortune in London, though some of his early, highly significant research was conducted on the south coast of England. For many years, Baird worked quietly in business, but his talents and passions never ran toward a professional career. Fascinated by mechanics, motors and electricity, he voraciously read technical books and popular magazines like Wireless World and Wireless Weekly. In one of these he encountered the word television - coined by Constantin Perskyi at the International Electricity Congress of 1900 in Paris. Literally meaning, "to see from a distance," television was the latest term for an concept that had been seriously discussed since the mid-19th century. Baird became intoxicated with the idea of a machine that could transmit images of events as they occurred across the world. Many solutions had been proposed, but Baird found the work of German inventor Paul Nipkow particularly intriguing. In 1884 Nipkow patented a primitive television device called the Elektrisches Teleskop. (It sounds rather like an electric telescope!) At the core of this apparatus was a disc punctured with a spiral pattern of 24 holes. As the disc spun, light reflected from a subject passed through the holes and stimulated a photosensitive selenium cell. The cell, in turn, produced an electric current, which charged a light source in a receiver. In front of this spun another disc, perfectly synchronized with the one in the transmitter. Light passing from the disc was viewed through an eyepiece. The result was a flickering reproduction of the transmitted image. Baird died in June of 1946. The work of John Logie Baird comprised a crucial break-through in television technology. Today, 95% of modern TV is pre-recorded, an approach recommended by Baird. A large amount of contemporary TV utilizes the film scanning system of Rank-Cintel, which absorbed Baird's Cinema Television. Baird's single electronic gun CRT development work in 1945 was eventually followed in the design of the Sony Trinitron tube. In a manner that today seems commonplace, his initial mechanical solution was quickly supplanted by newer technology, but his inventive work continued and his legacy continues. Baird succeeded in perfecting visual transmission systems others had long abandoned. His single-minded tenacity proves that most obstacles are no greater than the limits of the imagination. As simple and elegant as his idea was, Nipkow had little success with it. The necessary means of synchronism and signal amplification were beyond the technology of his day. Reading about Nipkow's idea before the First World War, Baird supposed it would be easy to perfect. In fact, he was surprised to learn that no one had yet created a working television system. Ignorance can be a worthy ally for ambitious endeavours. Baird would face years of technical challenges, setbacks, and personal frustration before he finally created a working television.

THE THIRTIES - 1930-1939
A year before, on August 20th 1929, the first BBC transmission of 30 line experimental television began in John Logie Baird’s studio – Baird was the man who had invented television a few years before. On July 14th in 1930 the first experimental television play was transmitted and the BBC Symphony Orchestra was first seen on 22nd October. Whether that was television or radio is beyond me. In 1931 the BBC Theatre and Chamber Orchestra was first transmitted on July 27th and December 18th respectively. On August 22nd 1932, the first experimental television broadcasting from Broadcasting House took place, five months after the first radio broadcast from the same place. On August 31st 1936 Elizabeth Cowell became television’s first female announcer. BBC’s television service began on November 2nd 1936 from Alexandra Palace – a high definition service for the first time. A week later, PICTURE PAGE began on the new television service. 1937 saw the coronation of King George VI AND Queen Elizabeth, later to be known as the Queen Mother. This occasion was the first for the BBC to use an outside broadcast van. 1938 saw television transmitting news for the very first time – but in sound and no pictures. John Reith, who announced the death of King George V in 1936 resigned from the BBC on June 30th 1938. Neville Chamberlain, the then Prime Minister’s return from Munich was broadcast live on television and radio in September 1938. However in September 1939 the BBC’s television service closed down due to the outbreak of World War Two. So it seems that we have nothing to write about for the next six years, doesn’t it?

THE FORTIES – 1940 - MAY 1945
No television at all, due to the Second World War. Nothing else that I can do here is there, but you only had Adolf Hitler to blame for that, didn’t you? How about putting your feet up, drinking a mug of some warm Ovaltine and listing to the Home Service? “We are the Ovaltineys, happy girls and boys…” Wait a minute, there’s a bomb just gone off outside! (BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!)

MAY 1945 – 1949
Television was back on air, resumed by the same Mickey Mouse cartoon that was last seen when the service was last on air six years before. On May 8th 1945 a broadcast was made by the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and King George VI on VE Day, followed by Broadcasts by the same King along with Clement Atlee on VJ Day – that was on 15th August 1945. The following year, television's inventor John Logie Baird died and he never saw what technology that he helped make possible in television's earlier years develop into. Children got television for the first time in 1946 when the BBC catered special programmes for their age group. We want MUFFIN, MUFFIN THE MULE, and the kids of 1946 certainly got it on October 20th 1946. A couple of months earlier, Richard Hearne aka MR PASTRY began his sub-Charlie Chaplin act, entertaining the middle class children, whose parents did have a few bob for a new television set. THE LAST NIGHT OF THE PROMS and DESIGNED FOR WOMEN were two television programmes that began in this year as well as the Cenotaph Remembrance Service, the first time that the November Remembrance Day was celebrated transmitted on November 8th 1947. INVENTORS CLUB and the first Olympic Games from Wembley were transmitted in 1948. Golf was first seen on television in March 1949 and MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH was first seen six months later.