Oldest known BBC recording
In the 1920s, the BBC was transmitting a single television channel (actually the only television channel transmitting in Britain) using the first system to be given an ITU letter designation. System A was positive modulation – meaning that dropouts were light patches rather than dark ones, as seen in later systems such as the 625-line PAL system currently in us (until 2012, at any rate) in the UK.
In any event, while reading up on the history of TV standards (which I’ll come back to as it’s quite fascinating), I came across the oldest surviving off-air (i.e. live) footage of BBC programmes.
It comes from 1938, and was actually recorded in New York, thanks to high sunspot activity affecting the ionosphere. (Amateur radio enthusiasts refer to this extended range reception as DXing, and the televisual equivalent as TV DX).
There’s no sound, as the camera was a cine one. The video is about four minutes long, and the signal does roll and flicker a bit – but then it was being filmed approximately 3,000 miles away from its transmitter. What’s all the more impressive is that the Londoners who would have been receiving the broadcast would have needed to be within thirty miles of the transmitter to get a watchable picture!
So there you have it – four minutes of movie footage that represents the only surviving off-air recording of pre-World War 2 BBC television anywhere in the world.
Tags: BBC, television, video