© 2008 Museum of Communication
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.
On the left is a replica of the John Logie Baird Televisor (1930). 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-