OTD in early British television: 8 March 1939
John Wyver writes: The 8 March 1939 edition of the popular magazine The Bystander carried a quarter-page ad for the recently-installed television studio at Selfridge’s in London’s Oxford Street. ‘TELEVISION IS *HERE’, it proclaimed. ‘You can’t shut your eyes to it!’
By *HERE the ad meant the department store that had been a site strongly associated with television ever since John Logie Baird’s first demonstrations of his 8-line system back in March 1925. Extending its celebration of all things modern, Selfridge’s had frequently hosted further demonstrations and was a key central London sales site for receivers.
On 13 February 1939 the store went a step further with a fully-fledged closed-circuit television system. A single Emotion camera, boom mic and a Marconi-EMI transmitter were set up in a glass-sided sound-proof studio in the store. Shoppers were able to compare transmissions from this studio, as well as the AP output when it was live, on a wide range of receivers, a number of which were in the same space as the studio.
In the adjacent Palm Court an additional 24 sets by different makers were on view. ‘The pictures varied in colour,’ noted a visitor, ‘from black and white to pale green, blue, or violet and in definition and had its own individual good and bad points.’
A small Ekco model was regarded as attractive priced at 23 guineas, while the larger Pye 815 delivered a good, clear picture for 30 guineas. Top of the range at 120 guineas was an HMV set that included an all-wave radio set and an automatic record-changing gramophone.
As the advertisement promised,
Here is Television “with the lid off” transmitted for £20,000 Studio in full view of the public…bringing to you all of the power, mystery and glamour of this miraculous new force.
As a gesture of support, the Television service at AP laid on a special 6-minute morning glimpse of a play rehearsal for the Selfridge’s opening, with Dame May Whitty and Basil Radford, among others, shown prepping the afternoon’s broadcast of The Royal Family of Broadway.
Separately, Jack Hulbert was among the performers coaxed into making an appearance, and the in-store schedule also featured fashion parades, dancing competitions for young girls, sports demonstrations, and talks on beauty, cookery and fashion. The unique attraction with its focussed address to middle-class female shoppers was on show for at least two months.
Reporting on the opening The Times also noted,
The original Baird apparatus, which was used to give demonstrations at Selfridge’s as long ago as 1925, was also on view. It is now permanently housed at the Science Museum, but has been loaned for Selfridge’s for the exhibition.
Nothing could show the progress of television so well as comparing this apparatus, with the primitive result it achieved as shown in a “photograph”, with the high definition of the pictures on the screen today.
No one who is interested in the future of television should fail to pay a visit to this interesting and, indeed, exciting exhibition.
Fascinating, and slightly eerie, to see how this in-srote promotion anticipated so accurately the future of TV ‘lifestyle’ prgramming. They guessed where it was headed!