Alec Bray
I have been scanning in some old transparencies and I came across three which might be of interest – they are of the National Radio Show – trouble is, I don’t when they were taken!
I can tell you that they were shot on Ferraniacolour reversal film which I processed myself – with the strip of film held up to the kitchen tungsten light bulb for the second exposure (luckily not so time critical as initial exposure) with the film initially exposed in an Ilford Sportsman Vario model 35 mm camera, the sort that meant that, if you didn’t have an exposure meter (I didn’t), you had to set the exposure f-stop and shutter speed by skill, experience or guesswork – usually the latter.
From other exposures on the film, I think that it might be summer 1961 – and it should be the National Radio Show at Earl’s Court in that year. It could be 1960, as the slides have not been stored in sequence.
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Albert Barber
Is this better?
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Ian Hillson
This is a similar shot from Getty images saying (late?) 1950s
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This still is probably taken off a BBC moving picture – “Exhibits fill the Earls Court Exhibition Centre for the BBC Radio Show”
Dave Mundy
If it was the 1961 show then it’s a big coincidence because my TO course visited it on a day trip from Evesham!
Bill Jenkin
Found this on Youtube which claims to be 1961 but nothing which could identify it as the same year.
Keith Wicks
I found a large image of this “Radio Times” cover (August 17, 1961):
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I wonder how much artistic license had been involved, especially as the artwork would have been commissioned before the exhibition was up and running.
Alec Bray
The Getty images clip is definitely from the same show as my colour transparencies.
The 1961 video shows different stands and logos (especially BBC), and the BBC stand, in particular, is much closer to the stand shown on the “Radio Times” cover. These just confirm that it was not the 1961 Radio show I photographed!
From the 1961 video:
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Interesting that the BBC Genome project has “… from the BBC Celebrity Stage …” in 1961: my pictures show the “BBC Show Stage”, so, again, not 1961. But other transparencies in the set I can date precisely: oh, dear, it is confession time … there are photos of a holiday at Totland Bay on the Isle of Wight, where I learned to do the Twist, and so this could be 1960 (“The Twist”) (but that was a hit only in September) or 1961 (“Let’s Twist Again”). The best thing about the Radio Show was the bit where a celeb talked to a member of the audience who then chose a record, any record, and challenged the BBC Gramophone Library to find their choice in record time. Lot of running round corridors and cueing up on gram decks, although some of the most likely record choices were held locally (?). What a difference to modern playout.
Bernie Newnham
Which was the year that demonstrated colour TV with the RCA colour cameras? I knew I had to be a TV cameraman after that. The same show trailed “Thunderbirds”, talking about how they took three months to make an episode.
Clifford White
Here’s an excerpt from my own page on the Tech. Ops. History site , detailing some of my experiences during the pioneering days of Colour TV.
Read Clifford White’s full article :
“… I trawled through my work-schedule diaries for the years 1960-65, and came up with the following entries:
Friday, 13th July, and Monday, 16th July, 1962. Studio H, Lime Grove. Colour TV Experiments.
Monday, 20th August, to Saturday, 1st September, 1962. Earls Court Radio Show.
I believe that, as a result of those experiments a month ago, this is when Colour Television was first demonstrated to the Trade and the visitors to the show…. ”
I was one member of a studio camera crew that was sent to Earls Court to televise all the proceedings on the BBC Show Stage for distribution to all the CCTV monitors set up around the Arena.
Alec Bray
Colour was shown at the Radio Show in 1961:
The person who posted it wrote: “…This footage, which I shot (16fps) on ‘high speed’ 16mm Anscocolor (100ASA!) shows the first UK public demonstration in 1961 of colour TV from the BBC. Sitting in a special glass fronted studio, two massive Marconi BD 848 colour cameras, each with a zoom lens, shot a simple interview set. …”
From the 1961 video:
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Obviously, from Cliff’s email, the BBC did it again in 1962.
1959 BBC Stand:
So not 1959, 1961 (in both cases, the BBC stand is different).. Unlikely to be 1963 as I was working at the Beeb by then…
Albert Barber
I found this on the web
“… The BBC demonstrated colour television to the public for the first time at the National Radio Show at Earls Court in 1961. Live transmissions from a glass-sided studio as well as film transmissions were demonstrated on six 21-in. monitors. Each colour monitor had a 21-in. black-and-white monitor alongside it to demonstrate compatibility. Only a small minority of the public or of dealers had seen any colour television previously, and both groups were favourably impressed…”
Hugh Sheppard
The 1961 Show was probably the one where I took over a high rostrum camera from the late, great Frank Hudson. His habit, borne of OBs, was to completely free off the Vinten pan and tilt head settings, which meant that someone used to panning through thin treacle, as taught to me in studios, found every muscle-twitch affected shots on a long lens. By the end of the week, I learned to take over his camera and not change a thing. Thereafter, I used his approach to settings until the time I went to Pres. in 1965.
