80th Anniversary of BBC TV

[ppppenguin]

Reactions to the programme have been mixed. A lot of techie people like us have been very critical but lay reaction has been pretty good.

I appeared for about 15 seconds altogether.

On 2nd November there were a couple of events at Ally Pally. I took this photo of Lily (the 92 year old dancer who stole the show) and Iain Baird who also appeared in the programme. The TV is Marconiphone 702 belonging to a UK collector. It is one of the very few that has been restored to run on 240 lines as well as 405. It was bought a few years ago from the Bennett-Levy auction and has been meticulously restored by Mike Barker. Several transformers and chokes had to be rewound. The CRT is very good (much better than mine -I'm jealous) and it ran without a hitch for many hours.

The 702 shown in the programme was at the Vintage Wireless Museum in South London. It hasn't been restored but John "just give it full mains" Wakely turned it on and it worked. The Museum, Paul Marshall and many other didn't receive credits despite giveing a lot of time and effort for no payment.

[tubesrule]

Jeff,
Was that 702 in the picture running at 240? Although the picture is small the image looks very good. Nice brightness and contrast.

Darryl

[ppppenguin]

No, it was 405. For some reason the pictures on a mirror lid set often look better on TV than in real life. No idea why. My 702, with its rather weak tube certainly looked better during my BBC interview a few years ago than in real life.