Abstract
ON February 4, a surprise item was introduced into the regular programme of the Dominion Picture Theatre, London. At 8 p.m. an experimental demonstration of Baird colour television was effected for the first time in public. The sending station was the South Tower of the Crystal Palace, the wave-length employed being 8·3 metres. The quality of the pictures was naturally much inferior to those with which the present-day viewer is familiar: only 120 scanning lines being used as compared with the 400 lines now employed by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The projected picture was twelve feet by nine feet and could be clearly seen by everyone in this large theatre. It was illuminated by a high-intensity arc lamp. The programme included the transmission of fashion plates of ladies hats ; the various coloured flowers were quite brilliant and the gaily and variegated headgear sometimes used by officers abroad came out very distinctly. A coloured cartoon of Popeye the Sailor caused much amusement. Colour television is still in the early stages of development, but the transmission was very successful and the unexpected show was well received by the spectators.
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Colour Television at the Dominion Theatre, London. Nature 141, 278–279 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141278b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141278b0