Complete film of 1937 tv broadcast

[coolcatdaddy]

On YouTube I found a curiousity from the early days of television.

In the mid-1930s, RCA began field tests of their electronic television system that became the basis of the system used here in the US until the transition to hi-def. On July 7, 1936, they presented the first public demonstration of the system to their 225 network licensees.

Although they had taken still photos of the tv screens of this experimental work, they hadn't figured out how to do kinescopes. But they did want to make some kind of record of the event.

RCA partnered with Pathe newsreels to cover the broadcast. The newsreel camera was placed in the back of the studio, recording the entire broadcast. What you'll see in this film is the perspective of one of the spectators in the studio with the lights, technicians and cameras creating the broadcast. The soundtrack of the broadcast appears to have been taken from the sound board.

In post production, they inserted the films used during the broadcast - newsreels and RCA's special animated tv logo - into the film itself.

The film is in two parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iWJ5LObN2o


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHKPSH9dskI


Seen in the broadcast are several personalities, including stage and radio star Ed Wynn and Henry Hull, reciting one of the monologues from "Tobacco Road". Film fans remember him from "Werewolf of London" from 1935 and Hull was appearing in "Tobacco Road" on Broadway at the time of the RCA broadcast.

[Paul Penna]

Fascinating, thanks for the link!

[Donald Binks]

That was very interesting! Thank you. The announcer sounded like he was someone who had just wandered in off the street. I wonder how many people in New York had receiving sets to actually see the pictures off the air? And "telepictures" instead of television too!

One comment I would make is that I wish we could go back to the Newsreel fashion of presenting the evening news rather than what it has now become - a matter of the person reading the news a "personality" sharing equal importance with the news they read out.

I have seen film also of the BBC transmissions which started a year earlier in 1935 in both the Baird and Marconi systems, from a transmission tower and studios at Alexandria Palace (Alley Pally) in London. What fascinated me still further was that some boffin worked out a way to be able to record the pictures on to a gramophone record - although not in any great deal of fidelity.

Australia had experimental Television from 1926 but proper broadcasting of it only began in 1956.

In conclusion when colour television transmissions commenced in 1968 in the U.K. David Frost announced them by stating:
"For those of you watching in black and white I hope you find our programme colourful, and for those watching in colour I hope that both of you enjoy it!"

[Bob Birchard]

This was absolutely fascinating to me because I wrote a piece about this "first" NBC television broadcast for issue # 2 of POP TWENTY: http://www.amazon.com/Pop-Twenty-Centur ... 1478101091

Could they have picked a worse camera angle for covering the show? But it is interesting to see the single-camera set up for the TV crew.

A couple of points, the NBC Telepictures refers to the film sequences, which were used to demonstrate the viability of broadcasting film, not to the process. They were clearly using the term "television" as demonstrated in the broadcast soundtrack. The film segments were inserted to allow clearing the set of the desk, etc., because there was only one camera. NBC would not initiate 2-camera production with a video switcher until 1937. This initial broadcast went out at 343 lines of resolution. By 1937 RCA engineers were able to achieve 441 lines of resolution.

Henry Hull was no longer appearing in "Tobacco Road" on Broadway at the time of this July 7, 1936 broadcast. He was reprising his role as Jeeter Lester for the broadcast.

The July 7, 1936, broadcast was seen by no members of the general public. Rather it was seen by the press and invited guests at Radio City, and by NBC and RCA executives and technicians in about 60 remote locations, most within 15 miles of the Empire State Building transmitter, but a few as far afield as 50 miles away.

[radiotelefonia]

EL LITORAL, Thursday, April 27, 1944 (Santa Fe, Argentina)

[quadradic]

Regarding Mr. Binks comment about the boffin who recorded television images on a phonograph record, the first man to do that was John Logie Baird himself. Perhaps Mr. Binks was referring to the amateur radio experimenter who managed to do the same thing by recording a Baird television transmission on a phonograph record directly off the air. It was not difficult, because the video frequency of the early low definition Baird transmissions was in the audio range, so anyone who had home recording equipment that recorded on a phonograph record could make a recording of the television broadcast as if it were a regular radio broadcast. Disk recording machines for the home were available in the thirties, before wire recording and later tape recording made home disk recorders obsolete.