OTD in early British television: 30 January 1937
John Wyver writes: another significant moment for the ‘high definition’ service from Alexandra Palace. Saturday 30 January 1937 was the last day on which the Baird system for producing and transmitting 240-line images was used. After this, AP relied solely on the Marconi-EMI 405-line system, and the Baird studio B was effectively moth-balled until the autumn of 1938, and until then was used only for rehearsals and occasional over-spill elements of particularly ambitious productions.
The Selsdon Committee report (of which more tomorrow) had directed that the ‘high definition’ service should operate with two competing systems, each providing production and transmissions facilities for alternate weeks. Marconi-EMI’s all-electronic set-up in studio A used four Emitron cameras, while in studio B Baird Television Ltd (BTL) cobbled together a mechanical ‘spot-light’ studio, used mostly for presentation announcements, and an “intermediate film” (IF) system, licensed from a German company.
The single IF camera captured images on 17.5mm film, which was then rapidly developed, and run through a machine that converted the images to an electronic signal. But this involved a 54-second delay, causing all sorts of synchonisation problems with sound. Overall, too, the audio quality was often very poor. Moreover, the camera was fixed in place, with very limited options for changing the shot. Working it also involved the use of noxious chemicals, it was clumsy to operate and was very unreliable.
As engineer J.D. Percy recalled, ‘‘The announcers spent most of their time apologising for breakdowns because everywhere you looked down the long chain of fifty-four seconds, you had disaster staring at you in a hundred places.’ In January modest improvements in picture and sound quality, together greater flexibility in focus and mixing, were praised in the specialist press, but they arrived too late.
‘At its best,’ director of television Gerald Cock summarised in an internal memo within a month of being on air, ‘the [Baird] apparatus does not permit efficient or attractive production methods. Uncertainties and limitations have had a deplorable effect on the programme production staff, while relatively poor and inconsistent quality in transmission has disappointed viewers.’
Cock’s report carried weight with his masters at Broadcasting House, and even more importantly within the Television Advisory Committee, which had been set up by the Post Office to oversee the introduction of the service. The the BTL system was used for productions for just seven weeks after the opening, and the contract was cancelled in mid-January.
Throughout its operation, output from studio A was singularly less ambitious than that from the Marconi-EMI studio. The last day’s line-up is indicative of this, comprising only a Punch and Judy show, a talk by gardener Mr Middleton, and cabaret items. Appended to that day’s records was the note: ‘several technical difficulties occurred throughout the programme.’
As producer Cecil Madden later reflected, ‘Working the Baird studio was a bit like using Morse code when you knew that next door you could telephone.’
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