OTD in early British television: 14 December 1936
John Wyver writes: Nothing. No television broadcasts from Alexandra Palace on Monday 14 December 1936, and only an apologetic mid-evening sound announcement. A fierce gale had damaged the transmission mast and taken the service off-air. A contributor to the January 1937 issue of Television and Short-wave World takes up the story:
The horizontal arms which carry the aerial arrays are hinged in the centre and these appeared to be bent upwards owing to the stays having broken. Efforts were immediately made to remedy the defect, and the ordinary B.B.C. engineers in spite of the high winds climbed the mast to make an inspection of the damage and actually sucteeded in repairing the lower aerial, which is used for the sound transmissions, so that an announcement could be put out at 9 p.m.
As the repairs had to be continued after dark some high power studio lamps were used to illuminate the mast which looked most impressive under the floodlig·ht effect, a point the B.B.C. could well bear in mind for the coming Coronation decorafions. The gales also took its toll of windows, large quantities of broken glass being strewn around the ground about the south-east tower.
Normal service was resumed the following day. The mast itself still sits on top of AP and remains a symbol of television. Pleasingly, too, in the East Court of the Palace today sits the top section of EMI’s prototype transmitter tower, on which the AP mast was modelled. This was originally built in 1935 at EMI’s laboratories at Hayes, Middlesex.
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