The day the first public TV started – level 2

02-11-1936

It is 1936 and there is a big competition in Britain. It’s a competition for the right to send the first regular television signal. The BBC has two companies which want to do this job.

One company is from the famous Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird, and the other company is EMI which works with another famous inventor, Guglielmo Marconi.

In the summer of 1936, both sides tested their systems, and on November 2, 1936, they went officially on the air.

EMI’s system was better because it offered better resolution. EMI won the competition.

The TV signal was sent for four hours daily from 1936 to 1939. There were from 12,000 to 15,000 receivers.

When the Second World War started, the BBC stopped the signal on September 1, 1939, because the signal could be used to guide enemy planes to London. It started again on June 7, 1946 after the end of the war.

Difficult words: competition (a situation when one company wants to be better than the other), inventor (a person who has an idea for a new machine), goon the air (to start to send a TV signal), resolution (ability to give a clear sound or picture), receiver (a device that can get a TV or a radio signal).

What other technological advancements were beneficial for the BBC transmission of television signal in 1936?

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