Secret life of the Alexander Palace TV transmitter

Thank you to 97 year-old HoL member Tony Mould for the following contribution.

The ‘Ally Pally’s steel tower in Wood Green, North London was the world’s first TV transmitter. Going to school I saw a new transmitter arm being erected each day. 

A few programs were transmitted just before the war. The presenters all wore formal evening wear clothing.

What I did not know was that although the transmitter was shut down at the start of the war, it was instead put to use in disrupting the Luftwaffe navigating technology. British scientists discovered that the Germans were using signals from a ground station near Calais to direct their pilots.  One expert in London spotted that the German system was working in the same frequency as the tv transmitter in London.

In February 1941 the ‘Ally Pally’ became a jamming station, disabling the Lucftwaffe Y-Gerit distance measuring system. It was a triumph; only about 25 per cent of missions using the navigation method managed to release their bomb over Britain. It definitely saved lives and prevented the catastrophe of the devastating air raids at Coventry happening elsewhere.

After the war a weekly active gardening program was broadcast.

A five metre square patch of the grass in front of the Palace was turned into a garden and updated weekly and presented by a gardener wearing a three piece suit.