1937 in Television - Events

Events

• February 6 – The BBC Television Service drops the Baird system in favour of the Marconi-EMI 405 lines system.
• March 9 Experimental broadcasting from Shabolovka Ulitsa television center, in Moscow (USSR).
• May – Gilbert Seldes becomes the first television critic, with his Atlantic Monthly article, the "Errors of Television".
• May 12 – The BBC use their outside broadcast unit for the first time, to televise the coronation of George VI. A fragment of this broadcast is one of the earliest surviving examples of British television – filmed off-screen at home by an engineer with an 8 mm cine camera. A short section of this footage was used in a programme during the week of the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II, and this latter programme survives in the BBC's archives.
• May 14 – The BBC broadcasts a thirty-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known instance of a Shakespeare play on television. Among the cast are Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
• May 15 – RCA demonstrates projection television, with images enlarged to 8 by 10 feet, at the Institute of Radio Engineers convention.
• June 21 – Wimbledon Championships (tennis) first televised by the BBC.
• July 10 – High definition television with 455 lines is first shown in France at the International Exposition, Paris.
• September – High definition television broadcasts are sent from a new 30 kW (peak power) transmitter below the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
• November 9 – Bell Telephone Laboratories transmits television signal of 800 kHz bandwidth on a coaxial cable laid between New York and Philadelphia.
• November 11 – The BBC broadcasts an adaptation of the World War I-set play Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, starring Reginald Tate as Stanhope. Shown in commemoration of Armistice Day, it is the first time that a whole evening's programming has been given over to a single play.
• December 31 – 2,121 television sets have been sold in England.
• CBS announces their efforts to develop television broadcasts.