It was 90 years ago that a handful of amateur wireless enthusiasts, most of them living in London, were treated to their very first experience of television. Watching on mainly home-built sets, they viewed and listened to speeches by the scientist Sir Ambrose Fleming, a “turn” by comedian Sydney Howard, a song from Miss Lulu Stanley and a speech from television pioneer John Logie Baird. It was the first actual broadcast of television to a public watching in their own homes. The world would never be the same again.
Television, that most ubiquitous of all media, has a long and distinguished history. The pioneering work of scientists and inventors, including Paul Nipkow in Germany, Charles F. Jenkins in the United States, Denes Von Mihaly in Hungary, and Baird in the UK, ensured that in time, television would be in every home allowing the viewing audience to be informed, educated and entertained.
In the UK, it is often thought that television “proper” began with the launching of the BBC Television Service on November 2 1936 from the studios at Alexandra Palace in North London.
But this was not the first television service. On September 30 1929 an experimental television service from the Baird Television Company began broadcasting using the BBC’s London transmitter (2LO). The Radio Times entry for 11.00-11.30 on the day shows an “Experimental Television Transmission by the Baird Process” nestled between a wireless talk on “How I Planned my Kitchen” and a wireless programme of gramophone records.
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