OTD in early British television: 16 September 1938
John Wyver writes: On Friday 16 September 1938 a television OB unit was among newsreel cameras at Heston Aerodrome to provide live coverage of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s return from meeting Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden. You can see the camera in the upper-left of the crowd.
A first transmission that afternoon began at 3pm even though the PM was not expected to arrive until 5.15pm. Thirteen minutes of what was presumably regarded as a test for later were filled with general shots of the airfield and a Lockheed 14 arriving, from which disembarked Mr MacMillan, chief instructor of British Airways Ltd, who was interviewed on camera.
The main event started at 17.18, catching the arrival and landing of the PM’s plane as well as his address to the crowd. Lord Halifax and German chargé d’affaires Dr Kordt were in attendance. By 17.39 the broadcast was over.
For one of his last columns for The Listener, Peter Purbeck was watching:
When the Prime Minister arrived at Heston last Friday evening and, on alighting, made a brief speech about his mission to Germany, the owners of ordinary receiving sets were able to hear the speech broadcast. Owners of television sets did not only hear it, they saw it being spoken, they saw all the stirring background of aeroplane, pressmen and excited crowd.
Despite the brevity of the coverage, this was the event that, as Purbeck recognised, ‘gave us the first real taste of television as a news-gatherer.’ Unlike the largely predictable Derby or Coronation procession, this was
news of the quick, sudden, mobile sort, the real news of the tape-machine, the singing telegraph wires, the special edition and the strident voice of the paper boy.
[OTD post no. 273; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication on 8 January 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, which can now be pre-ordered from Bloomsbury here.]
Leave a Reply