BBC Radio 4 - Early amateur television reception

BBC Radio 4 has broadcast an item in their Making History show about the reception during the 1930's of USA TV transmissions in the UK by pioneering Radio Amateurs such as Douglas Walters G5CV

Could a well-known ‘radio ham’ have picked up television signals from America in 1930, more than three decades before the Telstar satellite enabled regular transmissions across the Atlantic?

That’s the assertion of BBC Radio 4 Making History listener Geoff Gilham who discovered a letter to The Times from a Douglas Walters [G5CV] that claimed just that.

With help from Iain Baird at the National Media Museum in Bradford and Giles Read G1MFG from the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB), Making History’s Dylan Winter pieced together the early history of TV and showed that Walters, a journalist with the Daily Herald, was one of several amateurs who helped shape the future of television.

The 1920’s and 1930’s was a period in which many individuals and commercial organisations were playing around with television. There were problems providing sound and pictures at the same time and in viewing images too.

However, early TV signals used both the Short Wave and Medium Wave radio bands and this meant that they could be picked up over considerable distances (particularly at night). The scientific reasons were little understood at the time, but it explains Walters success in picking up test transmissions from New York.

The Making History show was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 15:00 BST on Tuesday October 6 and can now to heard on the web at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n0z4l

The MP3 Podcast can be downloaded from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/mhistory/

The item on TV starts 12:30 minutes into the show.
Early Television - Douglas Walters G5CV
http://www.earlytelevision.org/g5cv.html

Vintage video of BBC Televison received in New York
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/september2009/
bbc_television_received_in_new_york.htm