Image: The Mobile Television Unit at work outside Alexandra Palace in October 1938.
At the beginning, the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's Television Service was an "in-house" affair, confined to studios A and B of Alexandra Palace. This, above all, reflected practical considerations of what was technically possible with this new and still to be fully understood medium.
Speaking to radio listeners two weeks before the launch of television in the United Kingdom on 2 November 1936, the Director of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's nascent Outside Broadcasting division Cecil Lewis explained these limitations and his hopes for the future.
The desire of engineering and programming staff to liberate television into a wider world of televisual possibilities was not to be denied, even if initial results were rather parochial. A week after broadcasts began, as the Engineer-in-Charge at Alexandra Palace Douglas Birkenshaw recalls, the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's first live outside broadcasts was transmitted.
The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ and the 1948 Olympic Games
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The Birth of TV: London 1948 Olympics
The '100 Voices that Made the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ' project unearth unique oral histories from the team who made the biggest outside broadcast ever attempted. -
Broadcasting the 1948 Games
How the coverage looked, sounded and how it was promoted by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ in 1948. -
Staging the 1948 Olympic Games
Senior television engineer Norman Green recalls the preparation for the biggest outside broadcast yet attempted -
Working on the London 1948 Olympic Games
Producers, camera operators, and others recall how they coped with a tiny budget and pre-war equipment.