Launching BBC television

The BBC decided that ‘high definition’ should be defined as 240 lines per image. They selected two companies to trial competing systems for the definitive solution to television: the Baird Company Ltd. and a consortium of Marconi-EMI. Each system used different technology and both were experimental, with no guarantee they could produce a reliable, high quality service. The BBC would trial each on consecutive weeks until a preferred system won.

With the competitors selected, a battleground was needed where the cutting-edge new studio facilities would be constructed.

Alexandra Palace is a Victorian entertainment complex on a hill in North London. Its high vantage point and pre-existing architecture allowed for a 220ft (67m) mast to be built on top of an 80ft (24m) tower of a building perched on top of a 306ft (93m) hill, providing maximum coverage across London.

Inside, former dining rooms were torn out and the two companies squeezed in their equipment, each managing to fit a fully equipped studio and vision transmitter in the allocated spaces while sharing transmitters for sound, dressing rooms and facilities.

Science Museum Group Collection

From the rival studio, Marconi-EMI avoided mechanical processes in favour of an all-electric system. From their labs in Hayes, the EMI teams had been working on a new form of television using a cathode ray tube—a glass vacuum where electrons could move from either end, creating an electrical signal for the image.

EMI had an agreement with the American company RCA which banned them from developing cameras using the technology and only permitted them to make television receivers. Two engineers—James McGee and William Tedham—experimented in secret, creating the first camera ‘eye’ tube in 1932.

Freed to continue work, Director of Research at EMI Sir Isaac Shoenberg oversaw a dream team of tech-nicians and engineers. Convinced by their ability to bring the invention to reality, he secured £100,000 from the EMI Board (a huge sum at the time) to create electric television. The result was the Emitron tube, the first electric camera tube to successfully transmit live pictures from the studio. By 1936 the cameras were ready for the competition, creating 405-line images—far above the 240 required.

The Emitron cameras were lightweight and free to move around the studio. Multiple cameras could provide different angles—though development was still needed to perfect them; cutting from one to another would send the signal out, destroying the picture. The ability to move the camera was a huge advantage—though before a special dolly was invented, the cameras were placed on an old Austin car chassis and pulled around.

Experimental broadcasts were made to a trade show, RadiOlympia, before the public launch. The programme Here’s Looking at You was devised by producer Cecil Madden and featured three stages separated by curtains, which the Emitron cameras would track through to reveal the next.

Within a few short months it was clear that the Emitron cameras developed by Marconi-EMI were the better system, and by February 1937 they were declared winners. They would go on to form the basis of television for decades.

Marconi-EMI continued to adapt and improve their Emitron cameras, and their system allowed for the first outside broadcasts and experiments with new forms of programming in the studio. But the early success of television would be cut short by the outbreak of war in 1939. When it relaunched in 1946 it was time for television to evolve again, with new innovations on the horizon.