The Alexandra Palace Television Society has received a new donation to our Archive holdings, a strip of film (containing just six frames) of the first telerecording to be produced at Alexandra Palace.
The film comes from the personal archive of Desmond Campbell, who originally worked with John Logie Baird and then at Alexandra Palace as the engineer responsible for lighting - earning him the title "Father of Television Lighting".
The label on the packet is in Desmond's own handwriting - the only thing missing is a date. However, this has to be pre-October 1947, (the date of the earliest known post-war telerecording to exist, featuring Adelaide Hall).
As the label states this was filmed using the "continuous motion system", a reference to the telerecording method using an adaption of the Mechau film projector system. The Mechau was a German film projector, which used a rotating drum of mirrors which by a complex system of gears and cams, angled themselves as they went round, and produced a continuous image from the film, one film frame dissolving into the next, thus the film didn't move intermittently but in continuous motion. To record the television image the, the system was reversed and unexposed film run through the Mechau. Arthur Dungate remembers that "the system wasn't light-tight so we had to work almost in darkness, with just a dim red lamp....."
Arthur also recalls "The resulting recording was known as a Telefilm, the term "telerecording" not coming into use until the advent of the Suppressed Frame system."
As you can see from the compilation image below, this is a unique item, from the very start of telerecorded programmes. The frames contain the well known face of Sylvia Peters, the post-war continuity announcer.
First telerecording produced by BBC Television at Alexandra Palace by
APTS Archive, on Flickr
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