Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Ham and High Broadway: Comment: "Let’s conserve birthplace of television, warts and all"
YESTERDAY's Ham and High Broadway carries Jacob O'Callaghan's featured, double-page spread, Let’s conserve birthplace of television, warts and all.
The article is now available online here.
Their front page carries a note to it: Ally Pally's plan for BBC studio renews debate.
More and more I have come to value the Fourth Estate.
LIke Harringayonline, the Ham & High continue their tradition of providing a genuinely independent platform for debate and discussion, uncontrolled by the authorities. That function was immensely valuable in 2007, when the Council tried every trick in the book to dispose of our Charity's asset to a former slum landlord ... including the suppression of key information, especially the Lease.
In an effort to balance, the H&H also carry an official PR statement from AP management that contains the remarkable – if not astonishing – claim that The studios will be restored ...
Tags for Forum Posts: Alexandra Palace, BBC, Let’s conserve birthplace of television, warts and all, TV Studios, demolition
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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*cough* I have to remind you again about your titles .
The correct title should read - "Let’s conserve birthplace of BRITISH television, warts and all". Ally Pally wasn't the birthplace of TV, just of British 'high definition' TV.
You know that's the case, why do you continue to try and get away with it?
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Permalink Reply by Lynne on
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Hi Stephen
"On 2 November 1936 the BBC introduced the first, regular, high-definition, 405-line television service in the world. Before that there had been episodic low-definition broadcasting in Britain and elsewhere, for instance in the USA and Germany. Later advances also took place there: tele-recording, colour broadcasting, the launch of the Open University, and video tape demonstrations.
Studio A was equipped with the relatively well-developed Marconi-EMI television system employing four Emitron cameras,
Studio B with the more experimental and varied equipment installed by Baird Television Ltd. In January 1937 the decision was taken to adopt the Marconi-EMI system as the London Television Standard for the future of television. The Baird equipment was removed and by September Marconi-EMI equipment was in Studio B too. At the same time a Central Control Room was constructed in the former Baird Control Room to enable all programme sources - from the two studios, outside broadcasts, and film channels - to be controlled separately. Almost immediately technical and production standards improved, and over the next two years the annual number of hours of television broadcast grew fourfold to over 900 hours in 1938. With this came an expansion in set ownership, which on the outbreak of war stood at 20,000 sets.
The BBC Television Service shut down two days before war was declared in September 1939, closing with a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Transmitters were adapted to radio counter-measures against German bombers, using settings derived from Enigma intercepts to jam or 'bend' German navigational radio beams known as the 'Knickebein', and later the X- and Y-Gerät Systems, thereby giving important protection to London and the Home Counties from Luftwaffe attacks, notably during the Blitz. This was one of a number of installations for this purpose.
Broadcasting resumed on the day of the Victory parade on 7 June 1946, and although take up was slow due to post-war conditions, there were technical advances such as the recording of outside events which, for instance, allowed film of the 1953 coronation to be rushed by plane to America. After the BBC acquired the former Gainsborough film studios in Lime Grove, Shepherd's Bush, Alexandra Palace closed as a production centre, apparently for good, in 1954. However, it reopened months later as the home of BBC TV News, which it remained until 1969, colour television being launched in 1967. Then, until 1981, Alexandra Palace was from where the Open University was broadcast."
The above is copy and pasted from English Heritage Grade 2 Listing report on Alexandra Palace via their website. I found this info a bit interesting so wanted to share it. It seems quite right that there was broadcasting of some LD TV before but this was the first public regular HD broadcasting geared for entertainment in the world around the time of the 1936 Hitler Olympics. Also interesting are Ally Pally's links to Bletchley Park and Alan Turin s Enigma machine code breaking and saving countless lives in WW2.
The debate should be about warts and all not about the history of TV, which was experimental then. It all happened in our back yard.
L
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Yes, I know all that. But all the jingoism won't change the fact that the British service wasn't the first TV service in the world.
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hehe.. but not the first..
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Lynne, this document (attached) won't come as a surprise to you. It's now in the public domain and I'd urge anyone with an interest in the fate of the 1936 BBC television studios to read it:
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APsubmit171214.pdf, 384 KB
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Lynne,
I found this info a bit interesting so wanted to share it.
I've also found some info that's a bit interesting and so wanted to share it too!
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Not Clive's title, but the Ham and High's, as indicated by the quotation marks.
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Yes; the title is Jacob's and the Ham&High's; I think the debate should be about, to what extent do we conserve [an historical site] warts and all.
In the 17th Century, Oliver Cromwell famously insisted on being painted warts and all:
Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.
At Alexandra Palace, the Council eschew 1960's airbrushing.
Oh no, the 1936 BBC Studios are to be Photoshopped!
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Oh what a shame John.. But it's an untruth the Ally Pally promoters like to push.
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Permalink Reply by Straw Cat on
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It's true that Logie Baird had demonstrated low-r TV , and the Americans and the Germans were setting up different systems. But the headline "Let's conserve the birthplace of the first public, high-definition, regular television broadcasts in the world, warts and all" (the accepted Guinness book of records title) would have been a squeeze even across two pages.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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I don't get it. What's wrong with an accurate history which mentions the inventions, and early development of television across the world being presented in the TV studio at Ally Pally - giving due weight to the building's role?
For people interested - and the paying visitors who'd come - isn't it important and more fascinating to offer the who-what-where-when of the whole story? What was happening in Berlin; in the U.S. and in Japan and elsewhere?
Is that your point, Stephen? That this shouldn't be another little Englander enterprise? Like those sports commentaries which focus almost entirely on the form and prospects of e.g. the English tennis players. (Or British if they're Scots.)
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