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http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> News and Comment >> Television's Opening Night: How the Box was Born http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1473265039 Message started by Simon Vaughan- APTS Archivist on Sep 7^th, 2016, 4:18pm

Title: Television's Opening Night: How the Box was Born
Post by Simon Vaughan- APTS Archivist on Sep 7^th, 2016, 4:18pm

The trailer has now been issued for the Windfall Films production, which has been commissioned by BBC4, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of BBC Television.

The show will be presented Dallas Campbell and two engineering experts, Professor Danielle George, and Dr Hugh Hunt, who have painstakingly recreated Logie Baird’s filming technology, including a seven-foot tall device nicknamed the “flying spot”, which contained a huge steel disc that span at nearly the speed of sound.

None of the performers who appeared in the original programming are still alive, but producers have traced Paul Reveley, a 104-year-old engineer who worked with Logie Baird from 1932, who helps with the reconstruction.

The team have also sought guidance from Lily Frier, who did not perform on the opening night, but danced in the first months of the television service going live, when she was just 12 years old.

Cassian Harrison, the controller of BBC Four, said that the programme, which included soloist Adele Dixon singing about the “mystic, magic rays” of television, would be a “classic variety performance”.

(Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/25/bbc-to-recreate-first-night-of-programming-80-years-on/)

TRAILER - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocoFIUlUopE&feature=youtu.be