OTD in early British television: 5 September 1936
John Wyver writes: One last Radiolympia post, this time from the final day of the 1936 edition, Saturday 5 September. On this day producer Cecil Lewis, a radio pioneer and soon to be tempted to Hollywood to adapt his memoir of being a First World War fighter pilot, pulled together the first ‘local’ outside broadcast at just after midday. He recalled the occasion for Radio Times early in January 1937; this is his account.
It is September 5, the last day of Radiolympia. Leonard Henry is appearing in the Variety there and is coming up to Alexandra Palace to make his first television appearance before going down to the Exhibition. The Director of Television suggests we take him outside, put him in his car, and watch him drive off.
It is a drizzly wet morning and the engineers are frightened of getting the cables wet, frightened of rain on the lens. I cover the Emitron [camera] with my mackintosh. We are all standing at the top of the steps outside the front entrance. The rain has cleared and the sun comes out for a moment. Beginners’ luck.
The camera points up to the door of the building, and Leonard Henry comes out with Mr. Cock. They walk into close-up, and Leonard tells one or two stories, asks if he has passed out, and, producing a learner’s ‘ L ‘ from his pocket, hands it to Mr. Cock, who does not quite know what to do with it. Leonard Henry, with a final gag, jumps for his car, and the car drives off, the camera following it round the terrace.
When it reaches the bottom of the steps below, we find that the comedian has forgotten his hat. We have previously secreted a microphone behind the pseudo-Grecian urn down there. Henry, now plus hat, makes a final gag and disappears. This was the first television outside broadcast, though we had already televised a shot from the balcony of the wide view from the Palace grounds over the north of London.
We were surprised when the weather was poor at the excellent results in very poor light. The Emitron camera is extraordinarily sensitive and will transmit a good picture under what appear to be impossible conditions; conditions, for instance, in which an ordinary hand camera would fail to take a picture…
Perhaps I should explain for those who are not following television closely that the Emitron camera is in many respects similar to the cinematograph camera and, when connected by a cable to the control room, transmits an instantaneous picture over the air. It follows that we are tied to the end of the cable and there is a limit at which it will give satisfactory results.
The cable itself is very costly and extraordinarily complicated, containing no fewer than 22 wires inside the outer sheath. It is made up in lengths joined by heavy sockets, and it is as much as one man can do to carry 50 feet of it. The cable is manufactured by hand, and until we have more of it we cannot arrange many broadcasts which are possible from the Palace grounds…
Though television will certainly have its plays, its opera, its ballet, and its array of personalities and talks, I believe that its unique feature, in which it differs from any other form of entertainment or news service, is in its ability to bring the actuality before the public at the very moment it is happening.
This is another way of saying that I think outside broadcasts will be found to be the mainstay of television, and that is what makes these first experiments at the Palace so interesting.
[OTD post no. 262; 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.]
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