Museum of Communication at Burntisland

Television

This section gives an overview of the technologies and equipment that have given us Television as we know it today. For more than 40 years, many of the most important national events, in a number of countries, have been experienced as TV events. Examples include the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and the death of Diana Princess of Wales in 1997. TV is probably the most important form of mass communication of the late 20th century.

A television picture is composed of horizontal lines; the more lines, the clearer the picture. All sets used in Britain until 1964 comprised 405 lines. In 1964 the system was upgraded to 625 lines, where it remains today. Regular TV broadcasting began in 1936 in Britain, but the development of TV relied on the coming together of a number of developments in related fields, such as telegraphy and electronics, over the previous 60 years. This convergence of innovations happened only when organisations such as the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), Electrical and Musical Industries, Ltd. (EMI), and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)—institutions with sufficient capital to fund research and development—realised that TV might be the basis of prestige, power, and profit.

Of the six sets on display, the replica of the John Logie Baird Televisor (1930) is the "odd man out". This was the first ever domestic television set and used a mechanically spinning Nipkow disc instead of a cathode ray tube. The disc was noisy and the picture, composed of 30 vertical lines, was small and of very poor quality. The set was built from a kit design available at the time.

When television broadcasts resumed after World War II, manufacturers started to experiment with tinted screens, in the hope of improving the definition and increasing the contrast to the black and white pictures. The model to the left has a 9" purple screen, and is a Pye BV20C (1949).

The next set is a Bush 9" (1950). It was the most popular set of the early 50's, and one of the last Bakelite sets to be produced. The 'double-D' shaped screen helped to increase the picture size. It cost £43.9.9d, including £7.19.9d purchase tax and sold in enormous numbers prior to the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth ll in 1953. The Coronation was the first occasion a television audience exceeded that of radio, with an estimated twenty million Britons viewing the proceedings from three million sets.

Mary J. MacDonald, 6 Oct 2005

[ Top | Next Page ]