BBC Television received in New York

Since the posting of this video a great deal of research as been revealed to me. This video is actucally in reverse, a mirror-image! The actual Disney cartoon has been identified, and myself and my fellow resercher will be publishing our results in a few months. More research is needed to identify the remainder of the footage, but watch this space for more information soon!

The four-minute compilation from 1938 exists only because of a technological fluke and the enthusiasm of two television buffs, one in Britain and the other in America where, thanks to freak atmospheric conditions, it was picked up and recorded on a cine camera placed in front of a television screen as the images came in.

Andrew Emmerson, the British enthusiast, spent five years tracking down the recording and believes it is the only surviving example of pre-war live high-definition British television. The flickering black-and-white footage includes Jasmine Bligh, one of the original BBC announcers, and a brief shot of Elizabeth Cowell, who also shared announcing duties with Jasmine, an excerpt from an unknown period costume drama and the BBC's station identity transmitted at the beginning and end of the day's output.

It was made at a time when no technology existed to record live broadcasts directly. Video tape was not perfected until the late 1950s and "telerecording", the quality copying with a cine camera mounted in front of a television screen was not developed until after the Second World War. There are other recordings from the pre-war era, but they are all cine film shot from a camera alongside the television lens, or as in the case of the Demonstration Films, recreated scenes in a shot in a film studio.
The American recording was shown on 26 June 1999 at the refurbished National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford.

Mr Emmerson, 50, a freelance researcher and writer on the television industry, said: "Rumours of a recording existing in America have circulated for years, but no one had ever got to the bottom of them. It was known that about this time there had been tremendous sun spot activity, which had a dramatic effect on the ionosphere. Broadcasts from the BBC Television Station at Alexandra Palace travelled less than 30 miles, but because of the sun spots they were being bounced off the ionosphere and picked up 3,000 miles away on the East Coast of America."

"There were reports that RCA, which was working on its own television system, had conducted an experiment to film the broadcasts. About five years ago I decided to check it out, but with no success. RCA could not trace anything, nor could anyone else. Then last year a friend at the American Vintage Wireless Collectors' Society agreed to mention it in their magazine."

One of the respondents was Maurice Schecheter, who worked in a New York television studio. He had a collection of television material and among it was one of the RCA recordings on 16mm film.

"He cleaned it up digitally and transferred it to a video cassette for me," Mr Emmerson said. "I was astounded. This was the oldest and probably the only example of live high-definition television from the pre-war period."

This film footage is from the Archive Collection held and administered by the Alexandra Palace Television Society.

http://www.apts.org.uk

~ APTS ~
Preserving the televisual past for the digital future

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

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• simon
• vaughan
• new
• york
• telerecording
• alexandra
• palace
• jasmine
• bligh
• elizabeth
• cowell
• bbc
• television
• history
• 1938
• ally
• pally

[wa5iyx]

The late 1930s issues of the Proceedings of the I.R.E. had articles on the reception of mostly German and BBC TV in New York by engineers with special equipment and antennas. The text of one of them (w/o figures) is on my site linked thru the page on BBC Low-VHF TV.

[aptsarchive]

@wa5iyx Many thanks for your comments. I would be most interested in reading about the reception of German and BBC TV in New York in the late 1930s. I have looked on your YouTube channel for BBC low-VHF tv but can't find it listed - and therefore cannot link through to the text of the proceedings of the IRE.

[wa5iyx]

@aptsarchive The text version of one old IRE article can be found in the papers subdirectory of my qsl.net site as ire_1939.txt Life would be easier if valid URLs could be simply posted on here.

[aptsarchive]

@wa5iyx Thank you so much for the link to the article. It is absolutely fascinating, and more importantly, it gives dates! This, when compared to the P-s-B records, means we can probably begin to identify the programmes featured in the footage. What I now need to do it to get an actual copy of the article as it contains photographs.

[aptsarchive]

@wa5iyx Have now requested a copy of the article from the central library, as the photographs are equally important as the text. However, from just a brief piece of research we now believe we have identified one of the sequences from the footage, as a result of the article. More news & updates as the research continues.

[ueberRegenbogen]

Judging from the rapid lip action, i'm suspecting that we have another case of the old 18 f/s at 24 f/s syndrome here.

[aptsarchive]

@ueberRegenbogen When comparing the Disney cartoon, which starts at 2.26 in this clip, with the actual cartoon, the motion looks identical, so think the frame speed is correct for this film.

[wa5iyx]

@aptsarchive My 1981 copy of that IRE article is at least a 2nd-generation Xerox and the graphs would scan poorly, so I didn't try to add them online. I don't know where I've stashed the other IRE article on the subject.

[twittykins]

Youtube won't allow me to post the web address of the full version of Mother Goose Melodies but here it is anyway: h t t p : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = P 6 M x m r O B k L U. Just remove the spaces between the letters to access it.

[twittykins]

I watched the section of the Disney cartoon with the full version playing from 3:30 minutes in to compare the two. The film above is running just a little too fast, so if aptsarchive could slow it down to match the speed of the segment that I've mentioned it might be easier to identify the featured plays.

[sweiland75]

Fascinating!