Oldest working UK television receiver discovered

Britain's oldest working television has been tracked down in a house in London.

The 1936 Marconiphone is thought to have been made in the months that Britain's first "high-definition" television service began.

The set belongs to Jeffrey Borinsky, an electrical engineer and collector of antique television and radio sets.

He bought the set, which has a 12-inch (30cm) screen from another collector 10 years ago and is still working on restoring it to its original state.

The screen is mounted inside a wooden cabinet. The image from the cathode ray tube, mounted vertically inside the cabinet, is reflected onto a mirror.

The few controls include volume and vertical hold, but there is no channel changer, as there was only one channel when it was made: the BBC.

The set appears to be in good condition, but Mr Borinsky aims to replace a number of modern components with originals.

"The cabinet was beautifully restored by the previous owner," he explained,' but my aim is to gradually restore its electronics to its true 1936 magnificence," he said. But the Marconiphone 702 still works as a modern television.

It has been hooked up to a Freeview box so that it can show digital channels, although Mr Borinsky has had to install a standards converter so that a modern television signal can be seen.

Mr Borinsky only keeps the set turned on up to two hours at a time, and he uses it to view films from the 1930s and 1940s.

He says he enjoys watching the kind of pictures that might have been seen by the original owners.

The National Media Museum in Bradford has a similar set, but does not use it to show television pictures for fear of damaging it.

Iain Logie Baird, the curator of television at the museum, said it is a thrill to see the Marconiphone working.

"It's very exciting to see the image the way people would have seen it in 1936, before television became ubiquitous as it is today," he said.

Mr Logie Baird, grandson of the television pioneer John Logie Baird, says this set would have been of huge local interest when it was first acquired at a cost of 60 guineas - the equivalent of £11,000 today.

"Television was a very exciting thing, it was something that the whole neighbourhood would come over to watch. People would crowd into the home of the owner."

The set was discovered as the result of a competition run by Digital UK, the body overseeing the switch to digital television. The aim was to publicise the message that just about any television, however old, can be used to show digital channels.

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

http://www.apts.org.uk

~ APTS ~
Preserving the televisual past for the digital future

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• apts
• bbc
• television
• service
• alexandra
• palace
• society
• simon
• vaughan
• history
• marconiphone
• jeffrey
• Borinsky
• 1936
• 2009

[OrodesIII]

Too bad we cannot see the programs from back then.

[aptsarchive]

@OrodesIII We try and make as many historical programmes or videos available to view on our YouTube Channel. Sadly, telerecording didn't come into use until the late 1950s, but then only for certain programmes.

[MrMinimusss]

can I play with my ps3 on it??

[aptsarchive]

@MrMinimusss Yes, you could. In the same way as digital television can be viewed on a set of this age.

[kirtley2010]

i know someone with 2 or 3 of these sets but they are 1 or 2 years older so this is not the oldest set in britain

[aptsarchive]

@kirtley2010 Many thanks for your comment. This set was produced in 1936, just after the start of the BBC Television Service. It is unlikely that the person who has 2 or 3 of these sets can be much older, as a year before this set was made there was no 405-line electronic television. But I stand corrected if this is not the case.

[tubeie07]

Just beautiful. Oh to have lived back then at the start of it all - until I think of what we have all gone through to get to this point in history. Never the less, to be an early adopter back then would have been very exciting. Another great posting ASTS...

[hydrolito]

There are also projectors that can be hooked up to VCR or other similar receiver devices to project tv pictures on any white or light colored wall or portable movie screen and up to a size of 120", I saw one advertised for $80 in an advertisment once, I think you would also need to have Seperate speaker system set up though as was only advertised as a projector.

[AlexeiL11]

boy i was being sarcastic

[AidanLunn]

@Simpson654 Replace "BBC" with "ITV" and then I'd agree with you :)

[AidanLunn]

@AlexeiL11 How can a TV set that runs on 405 lines (377i) support 1080p?

[MrUnidyne]

It amazes me to see these old TV sets. They were as big as jukeboxes and had screens the size of a cell phone.

[NESHero]

@AlexeiL11 no, it's impossible.

[fancysnake1]

@AlexeiL11 What do you think?

[pvx]

@altfactor Yes, it kind of reminds me of the digital tv transition here in the States, most local stations were transmitting both digital and analog 525-line at the same time (the FCC had temporarily assigned secondary tv channels to select stations to simulcast a digital version of their programming). This went on from ca. 1999-2000 to 2009, when the US switchover was made official by stations then going to digital-only. Low-power stations are exempt from this, though, and are still analog.