From Birth to Teens: TV’s Earliest Years at BFI Southbank

Throughout September,  BFI  Southbank will celebrate the 75th  anniversary of a landmark in  
Television history that saw Britain  deliver the world’s first high definition, regular public television service. Together with  The  Alexandra Palace Television Society, the BFI will host a short season of early public demonstration films, plays, and documentaries plus rarely seen extracts from early films and stills on  display. 


In the 1930’s, there  was feverish activity across the globe as inventors, technicians and entrepreneurs sought to create the world’s first public television service. Great strides were being made in America, Russia, Germany, Japan and France, but it was Britain who emerged first. Although experimental services had been operating since the 1920’s, it was in November 1936 that the  BBC launched the world’s first high-definition, regular public television service following test transmissions at Radiolympia in August of that year.  The Television Age had begun.   


Television wasn’t invented by an individual but by the progressive and scientific minds of many, though there is no doubt that, in the UK, it was popularised by the Scottish inventor  John Logie Baird. His startling experiments made newspaper headlines and both him and his invention household names. When the BBC service launched in 1936, transmissions alternated between Baird’s mechanical system and Marconi EMI’s electronic equipment. Eventually the Marconi system was preferred, but Baird’s role in bringing TV to the public eye was of great importance in the development of a fully fledged public service.