1970: How the FIRST EVER TV play was made in 1930 | Review | Making Of... | BBC Archive

Review marks the 40th anniversary of the first ever television play, an adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, which was broadcast using John Logie Baird's television system. The surviving members of the original cast and production staff have been reunited, and - using copies of the original equipment - recreate the play, using the same techniques as they used on the 14th of July 1930.
James Mossman presents, and is joined by two of Baird's assistants - Tony Bridgewater and D R Campbell - who explain how Baird's mechanical television system worked, and why it was unable to compete with electronic television systems.
This is a fascinating television experiment, an incredible insight into the workings of the Baird system, and a testament to the ingenuity and skill of the people who created television on it.
Originally broadcast 4 April, 1970.
For more on this, and many other broadcasting milestones, visit the BBC 100 site: www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc...
You have now entered the BBC Archive, a time machine that will transport you back to the golden age of TV to educate, entertain and enlighten you with classic clips from the BBC vaults.
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[@GarethStack]

Insane to think that we're further now from when this was broadcast than they were from that first flickering broadcast.

[@Avrage_Welsh_Resident]

Id still watch it it's quality is still better than the cameras that took the big foot footage

[@altfactor]

This was Britain's first TV play, but General Electric's experimental TV station in Schenectady, New York, televised a play called "The Queen's Messenger" in 1928 and several other plays in 1929.

[@oleggorky906]

Oh, yes, of course. I’ve heard the Yanks claim that they invented pretty much everything first, including; telephone, car, radio, hovercraft … you name it, they took the credit for it.

[@jthoward]

Man, the existence of the BBC Archive is so damn cool; 52 year old TV, still being shown today

[@nicktamer4969]

My grandpa watched these shows in the south of France in 1933 on a home made Baird's system television set I still own today. Radio amateurs like him used to build their gear in those days, and all those TV experiments were known and followed world wide by geeks of that time. I'm still amazed the transmition was working all the way from Crystal Palace to Lyon (my grandpa had put 4 huge antenas on the roof of our house).

[@me323me]

Wow! It's amazing to hear that you still own that television, is it in any condition to display an image?

[@privateprivate1865]

​@@me323meyeah.. very cool

[@nicktamer4969]

@@me323me It was in early 90's. It probably still work, but there is no more analog TV aired.

[@sirvivor_1974]

That´s why we need archives, to unearth gems like this. Couldn´t be replicated today.

[@JonHiddenColey]

Wouldn't it be great to take todays television technology back in time to show John Logie Baird? It would blow his mind!

[@JonHiddenColey]

@@bcrox I think he'd be more interested in the technology rather than what's showing on it.

[@SMGJohn]

I doubt Baird would be "blown out of his mind" instead he rather predicted the advances of technology, Baird already had conceived a high definition television by end of 1940s however its cost and over complicated design meant that his vision of an HD colour TV was not to be real until Japanese MUSE in the early 1980s would realise his dream.

[@dwayne_dibley]

@@SMGJohnyes, there’s a lot left out in this video about Baird. Also The image dissector was implemented in later designs and Farnsworth came to Britain to work with Baird.

[@moow950]

Would be fun to see his reaction to see 8K 3D holographic television with AI generated content 😁 !

[@Seal0626]

And here I am, 52 years later, watching this on my phone.

[@shmikex]

The aspect ratio is similar to watching on your phone horizontally.

[@AnthonyDeaverRandolph]

Did you see the original broadcast?

[@Seal0626]

@@AnthonyDeaverRandolph nope, wasn't born yet.

[@mt-mg7tt]

Spellbinding: the technology, the images, Pirandello's words and hearing and seeing the original actors. A genuine example of a "flying-spot" TV camera.

[@josephconsoli4128]

Awesome. Even though the picture did little aid for the dialog, it must've fascinated people just the same. As a collector/historian of vintage TV's, I find still it one of the most miraculous inventions of all time.

[@MadBiker-vj5qj]

They did a segment about Baird's system on Blue Peter back in the 1970s. In addition to the equipment, they also showed the high-contrast makeup that was needed to get a decent picture. One of the presenters was shown wearing the makeup, which looked like a pair of bruised black eyes. I feel that they would have got better results on this re-creation by using the same makeup.

[@jimmypenn]

To think we now complain about dvd quality compared to bluray / 4K , how far we have come , fascinating !

[@jayjohn9680]

This helps to really understand not only television yet technology in general.

[@RadioHist]

I built my first replica of a scanning disc TV camera and receiver in the late 1970s here in the USA. I too was able to share in the elation that J. L. Baird must have felt along about 1925 seeing his first crude moving images that could be transmitted by wireless... I too could share in his ultimate realization that the mechanical scanning technology was never to practically achieve high definition TV. a.k.a.(At least in the late 1930s) Something above 400 line resolution. Wonderful that this 1970 recreation survives and can be seen by me 52 years later!

[@garryberman894]

I hate to break it to you, but the first drama of any kind performed on television broadcast was "The Queen’s Messenger," televised on General Electric’s experimental W2XB (WGY) in Schenectady, September 11, 1928. Described as “one of those high-society, European-setting melodramas, with fancy cigarettes, switched suitcases, and heroic sacrifices, which were so popular ion the stage at the turn of the century.” It had been written in 1899 by J. Hartley Manners, who died a year before the broadcast. It starred Izettea Jewell, a retired stage actress, and Maurice Randall a radio actor at WGY. The primitive cameras of the time weren’t mobile, so the actors were restricted from moving about the set. One camera took only the scenes in which Miss Jewell appeared, another only the scenes in which Mr. Randall appeared, and one camera only shot close-ups of an actor’s hand movements. “The technique of television drama made it necessary for the actors to have two assistants, Joyce Evans Rector and William J. Toniski, whose hands ‘doubled’ for the hands of Miss Jewell and Mr. Randall in certain scenes and who manipulated the ‘props’ before the television camera. This was necessary because at the present stage of development only the heads of the two actors could be transmitted. In addition to the cameras there was a radio microphone in front of each actor. The picture traveled only a few miles, to be received by a grand total of four TV sets, but the audio was picked up on short-wave on the west coast. The broadcast was such a major event it was given a front-page headline in the New York Times the next day. New York Times: “For the first time in history, a dramatic performance was broadcast simultaneously by radio and television. Voice and action came together through space in perfect synchronization, in a forty-minute broadcasting of J. Hartley Manners’s one-act play, “The Queen’s Messenger,” an old spy melodrama, for years a favorite with amateur thespians, which was chosen for the experiment because its cast contains only two actors, who could alternate before the television camera. “While the actors went through their parts in a locked studio room, the audience saw and heard them over a synchronized radio-television receiving set in another room in the same building. Their appearance and voices, translated into electronic impulses, were carried by land wire to transmitting station WGY, four miles away, were broadcast from there, and were picked up again at the place of origin. “The effect was the same as listening to a play by radio, as every radio fan can do, except that in addition one could see moving pictures of the actors as they spoke their lines and did their stage ‘business’ with cigars, cigarettes, pistols, knives and other props. “The pictures were small, three by three inches, were sometimes blurred and confused, were not always in the center of the receiving screen, and were sometimes hard on the eyes because of the way in which they flickered." It was recalled that ordinary moving pictures suffered from worse mechanical defects in their early days, and that these shortcomings of the radio-television pictures signified simply that they were still in an experimental stage. “Dr. E. F. W. Alexanderson, consulting engineer of the General Electric Company and chief consulting engineer of the Radio Corporation of America, whose inventions of television transmitting and receiving apparatus made the demonstration possible, made it clear that it would be some time before radio-television had been perfected to such an extent as to make it practical for public entertainment. “He predicted, however, that someday we would have special television theatres, a chain of theatres all over the country or the world, without actors, musicians, scene shifters or stage hands, receiving simultaneous identical broadcasts of theatrical nd musical performances by radio-television from a central broadcasting station. Color television, too would be added to this system in time, he said.” “Great as has been the success of the talking movies, they may easily be outdone by radio-television if the technical difficulties are overcome, for then radio-television will bring both the words and scenes of dramatic and musical performances, besides public events and athletic contests, into the home as well as into theatres. “The play was broadcast at 1:30 o’clock in the afternoon, the regular WYG television hour, and was repeated at 11:30 tonight. Several amateurs on the Pacific Coast have reported fairly good results from the ordinary television broadcasts hitherto attempted, but they have regarded themselves lucky when able to hold an image for thirsty seconds on their television receiver.” “The dramatic company which presented ‘The Queen’s Messenger’ was headed by Mortimer Stewart, producer and director, who has presented many radio plays from WGY and the New York stations of the National Broadcasting Company. “Mr. Stewart, as director, operated a control box to bring each actor on to the screen at the proper time and to ‘fade’ the actors in and out of each scene as is done in the movies. In front of Mr. Stewart was a special receiving set, so that he could see the images as they appeared on the television receiver and check them with the voices. “The performance was broadcast on three wave lengths, the pictures on 379.5 meters and 21.4 meters and the words on 31.96 meters. It was made possible by the recent development by Dr. Alexanderson of a simplified portable television camera, which was used for the first time in public to record Governor Smith’s acceptance speech at Albany, and by the prior development by Dr. Alexanderson of a simplified television receiver. “The showing was received in the studio by wire connections as well as by actual broadcasting. Those who saw it both ways said that the actual broadcasting gave even better results than the wire connections. “At the coming radio fair in New York City, Dr. Alexanderson will exhibit his apparatus which makes possible the projection of twelve by twelve-inch television pictures on a screen by wire connections. It is not expected, however, that eh company will attempt to demonstrate its television dramatic performance at the fair, as the practical difficulties are too great.” --Russell B. Porter, Special to The New York Times

[@EternaResplandiente]

This is sooooo amazing its hard to put in words how magical this is....to see and hear people who worked in the first tv's if the late 20s. The fact that it's recorder it's beautiful to see if you really appreciate this amazing inventions

[@onlyme219]

That was great more please on this subject of the tec going further from the 30's

[@trevorbrown6654]

Odd when you realise this was made just 40 years after the programme it is recreating yet is in colour and was obviously recorded, as none of which was possible in 1930. To put that in context, it would now be like watching a show from 1983 like a Peter Davison episode of Dr Who, Minder, Morecambe and Wise, Benny Hill etc, stuff that still gets repeated on tv now. The BBC also had a policy of wiping old video tapes in the1970s so in some ways its a nice surprise that this still exists. The play was quite ingeniously staged considering the limitations involved but as they point out here, mechanical television was a bit of a dead duck really and the EMI system had so much more flexibility and room for potential growth so it's no surprise things unfolded as they did. Incidentally, I seem to remember once reading that John Gielgud's brother, Val, was the director of the original transmission so strange he doesn't get a mention here especially as didn't die until 1981 so was still alive at the time this was recorded.

[@RaccoonMan]

Toymaker hid the giggle in it.

[@gigteevee6118]

This is such a rare treat! Keep squeezing that archive!!!

[@kaeso101]

This is so fascinating... i am actually hooked by this 😊

[@gavinmillar7519]

We are so fortunate to have this.

[@Dominickudo]

Amazing stuff.

[@michaelbyrne5507]

I love this!

[@PlanetImo]

This was rather marvellous.

[@videolabguy]

Fantastic.

[@adrianbrowne7962]

" Brilliant " Having This Particular Process Explained In Such " Minute Detail " !!! From Adrian Browne 1965

[@Dave-cv1th]

In America, TV really wasn't a thing until the '39 World's Fair opened. They had live broadcasts from NBC, which sparked public interest. It must've been a fascinating time to see this early technology taking off.

[@Dave-cv1th]

The birth of early radio is remarkable, too. Hearing phantom voices broadcast over wireless sets must've rattled the public, and telegraph operators.

[@heliomonteiro4200]

Germans actually invented the television. The Baird system he shows in the video was based on the Nipkow disk, invented by Paul Nipkow in Germany decades earlier. The cathode-ray tube used in every early tv set was invented by Ferdinand Braun, who founded Telefunken. Nipkow still got to see the first demonstration of tv broadcast in 1928. Americans spent two decades fighting in court about who owned the television patent, while Europeans were way ahead.

[@heliomonteiro4200]

@@robturner3065 Baird did not invent television first. He was a British pioneer. The Germans made their first broadcasts almost simultaneously with the British.

[@1978TVP]

wata masterpiece!

[@litoboy5]

Amazing

[@kleverich]

What I find fascinating is this is not so much a modern television play but an extension of a classic radio play. You are seeing production techniques that are sort of a lost art today.

[@jasonayres]

(10:48) I couldn't agree with him more. I didn't know that "television" was a thing before the 1950's.

[@Mithrasboy]

It was very much a thing with the UK having a service in the London area from 1936 until the beginning of the war. It was a 405 line VHF system which was still in use until the early 1980s. WW2 slowed us down a bit and the Americans took the lead with a 525 line system called NTSC in the early 1940s. It was a higher definition than ours but ran at a different frame rate which caused a load of problems if you were trying to show a 24 frame per second film. The higher definition enabled the Americans to adapt 525 NTSC for colour and they had a workable system by the mid 50s. The BBC experimented with 405 line colour but it wasn't good enough so hung on for the German PAL 625 line UHF system which was used by BBC2 in 1967 for the first time.

[@jasonayres]

@@Mithrasboy Thanks very much. Adds to an already fascinating story. Kind regards.

[@ConsumerDV]

@@Mithrasboy PAL was a color system. The 625/50 scanning format was chosen by the Soviets in 1944 and later proposed as a common standard. Ultimately, it was accepted by most European countries after reducing the bandwidth from 8 MHz to 7 MHz.

[@Mithrasboy]

@@ConsumerDV Interesting. I was always led to believe PAL was developed by the Germans under Walter Bruch of Telefunken in 1962. In fact there was a story he called the system PAL rather than Bruch because his name meant breakage in German. But getting back to your comment, if the Soviets invented PAL why did they use SECAM?

[@michaelmcdonald2348]

@@Mithrasboy PAL was developed in Germany. PAL, SECAM and NTSC are all colour systems and not the line standards. The Soviet 625/50 system would have originally been monochrome before they chose SECAM for the colour service. PAL/SECAM/NTSC could have been applied to any of the line standards for colour.

[@600322]

The revolution speed of the spinning disc is expressed in rpm which according to the standard of motion picture is after division with 60 12,5 fields per seconds.

[@imrank340]

How strange it seems to be in 2022 but this is a History of TV in making. Mankind travelled almost 97 years to see clear moving images.

[@Axe_Slinger]

Logie Baird(john) - As I heard the last part of the inventor's name Yogi Bear popped into my head.

[@simonrussell4986]

I shall think of the effects guy when I apply a checkerboard transition in Premiere Pro. Then apologise to him when I replace it with a dissolve.

[@lordbarristertimsh8050]

It's really cool to see technology like this preserved and explained for us today. It may look quite primitive today, but consider how much motivation, how much work, and how much trial and error it took to even invent this in the first place! John Logie Baird hardly had anyone to copy or learn from!

[@shemdellashemygd29]

Stooky bill is the puppet thats in the doctor who trailers for the 60th anniversary

[@skudzer1985]

It's like watching TV on VIRTUALBOY...

[@jourwalis-8875]

Just imagine. This review from 1970 is from 52 years ago!

[@Vassilika1]

now I know where vertical videos come from.... And I thought it was the Smombie Generation.

[@thelastofusisr3al937]

Thats insanely good quality for 1970

[@dischargerecords2331]

It's early broadcast standard videotape .

[@John60s70s]

I once read that the European tv definition standard was higher than the US years many years ago. More scanning lines. I think they had HDTV before the US did.

[@lumabi25]

​@@John60s70sIn much of the world the PAL TV system had 625 lines (effectively 576i) whereas the US, Canada, Japan used NTSC with 525 lines (effectively 480i).

[@syedalamgir5838]

Great moments of 1930.

[@rachelmayes298]

How far we have come, but how amazing it must have been in 1930. I wonder how many people actually had a tv in the 1930’s? Hardly anyone. It must have been so exciting going to the cinema with your friends/boyfriend. I wish I was around in the forties

[@adrinathegreat3095]

I've a picture of my Grandmother taken in 1938 stood by one of these TV sets, the set was in a huge mansion that she was a nanny in. I think even by the late 30s it was only for the rich and only broadcast over a small area for a couple of hours a week. What's strange is when TV be came popular, many sets were put in cabinets with doors so people couldn't see you had a TV set. Nothing to do with them being stolen, but because owning a TV set made you look working class and common. It was often a case of " oh dear mr&mrs swift Butterfield are having one of those TV antennas on their roof, won't be seeing them at the theatre anymore

[@luiathmorgan7709]

I enjoyed the gentle play ..much better acting and more literate than you get on TV now. Of it's time.

[@John60s70s]

Spinning disks aren't for tv but DVDs, Blu Rays, and many hard disk drives do spin. I wonder if the video quality would be improved by faster rotation, using more photocells, etc. for that old device. I also wonder how much it costed and what was their budget.

[@BinnyBongBaron_AoE]

I generally can't stand the BBC these days, but damn, do I love the BBC Archive channel.

[@DeadSetOnDestruction]

The presenter, James Mossmam, died exactly one year after this was aired.

[@rongendron8705]

Since television was only invented in 1928 by American Philoh Farnsworth, it's hard to imagine that the technology had progressed enough, to produce a television play, by 1930! What is equally impressive is the quality of the 1970 videotape, used to produce this show! It is still absolutely perfect, after 50+ years!

[@sydwhitaker5776]

Farnsworth didn’t invent television, he invented a separate way of creating television pictures that eventually won out. John Logie Baird invented the first working television in the early part of the 20s

[@DAwdar]

About the quality of virtual boy i would say

[@Michael-it6gb]

This technology was too goofy to even call it a Television set. But it is very fascinating indeed.

[@jourwalis-8875]

The photo cells looks like a loudspeaker!

[@philipwelsh1862]

Baird had the idea first it was mechanical farnsworth made a different type with the main component the CATHODE RAY TUBE which was SIR WILLIAM CROOKES INVENTION WHO WAS A ENGLISHMAN

[@karlzen86]

The presenter James Mossmam, sadly, passed away 1 year and 1 day after this was aired. Suicide.

[@herby4215]

First steps of tv broadcast

[@jourwalis-8875]

The sound can not come from the old BBC, Reiz microphone!

[@heavenplus1]

And they called it a TV!!🤔

[@DenkyManner]

It captures your soul and traps it in hell.

[@JamifyYT]

Can’t get much more worse than where we are atm

[@CHALCEDON-edu]

So that's why there were so many perverts at the BBC. The reporter in this clip was a sexual pervert who killed himself the following year.

[@Chord_]

Anyone come here after watching The Giggle?

[@jourwalis-8875]

"High definition" in the thirthies!

[@Sheffield_Steve]

Baird's creation would never have worked for what the Government allowed these experimental broadcasts. It's obvious that the Marconi EMI system would be useful in testing for Radar. Imagine trying to put all that cumbersome Baird equipment on a ship or sub!! 🤔😁

[@robertomoi2044]

The presenter of this In 1971, David Mossman committed suicide in his cottage in Norfolk by taking a fatal overdose of barbiturates, leaving behind a note that read: "I can't bear it any more, though I don't know what 'it' is." He was 44

[@brettster3331]

This is not television it is a movie done like a film is played, television when invented was on a picture tube.

[@Fecske01]

They played it originally for just themselves? Who had TV sets back in 1930 at their home? 🤔🤔

[@absinthedude]

There were a couple of thousand in London at that time.

[@nicktamer4969]

My grandpa watched these shows in the south of France in 1933 on a home made Baird's system television set I still own today. Radio amateurs used to build their gear in those days, and all those TV experiments were known world wide by geeks of that time. I'm still amazed the transmition was working all the way from Crystal Palace to Lyon (my grandpa had put 4 huge antenas on the roof of our house).

[@marcse7en]

Thank God Baird's Mechanical TV flopped! ... Imagine watching "Coronation Street" in 2022 (the year I'm writing in) on a spinning Nipkow Disk! 👎🤣

[@absinthedude]

It didn't flop. It proved the point, that live moving images could be captured and broadcast over wire or radio waves. He broadcast across the Atlantic, to ships and even to aeroplanes, even recorded discs from the 1920s and early 30s survive. But that said, the big screens we enjoy today would have required a different system. The mirror screw mechanical TV could have achieved that but electronic television was more reliable by that point. However, without Baird's television, which really did work, we'd likely have taken a decade or two longer to get where we are. There's still some of Baird in every DLP video projector. The colour system used in the Apollo moon landing cameras has retrospectively been recognised as "pure Baird" by NASA.

[@marcse7en]

@@absinthedude So, the Marconi EMI Electronic System DIDN'T triumph over Baird's Mechanical TV? ... Think before you criticise, then you're less likely to look like a clueless numpty! ... You CAN'T rewrite history! ... I hope you enjoy watching your Nipkow Disc TV! 👎🤣

[@indigohammer5732]

Baird’s system was a failure. Mechanical television went nowhere. As a Scot, it boils my piss, when people claim he invented television.

[@TinLeadHammer]

Baird was a retrograde, promoting mechanical television. It was a dead end technology. Thankfully, the BBC chose EMI's fully electronic system in the end.

[@edwardnowill4408]

not quite-reference page 26 of Ray Herbert's publication "seeing by wireless" august 1944 Baird's 600 line 2 offset beams colour tv system using a glass enclosure originally designed as a mercury rectifier tube.The system was all electronic.Mechanical scanning systems are still used in some contexts eg supermarket check out scanners although this device was first envisaged by Mihaly Traub.

[@mfbfreak]

We must be aware that the whole progression from mechanical to electronic television happened in a time span of just 6 or 8 years. Baird's first televisors were sold in the late 1920s, and already in the mid 30s electronic television took over. It was indeed mostly a dead end, but you can't blame someone for refining their project for at least half a decade before calling it quits. It takes time to squeeze all performance out of an existing technology and to realize it can't go any further.

[@plusplusplusplusp]

This is absolutely crap quality. I know it was the best they could manage, but the picture is so bad as to be useless and not worth bothering. You would be much better off listening to a radio play or going to the cinema.

[@anonUK]

You've got to start somewhere.

[@anonUK]

@rick3yrick3y Farnsworth invented the CRT TV, not the CRT.

[@dwayne_dibley]

@@anonUKactually farnsworth invented the image dissector, essentially the electronic circuit that replaced the nipkow disc used in mechanical television

[@DavidCase-ov5uo]

The same could be said today. So much technology and so little programme quality. So many documentaries ruined by deafening music backgrounds.