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Britain's Oldest Working Television For Sale
If you happen to be in London on April 19th you have a chance to own a piece of history. A Marconi type–702 television set, which was built using England's then secret radar research, is going up for auction at Bonhams Mechanical Music and Scientific Instruments sale. Built in 1936, the set is believed to be the oldest working television in Britain. From the article: "The machine was bought for almost £100 three weeks after television transmissions began. But Mr GB Davis of Dulwich, south–east London would have only been able to able to watch it for a few hours. The nearby Crystal Palace and its transmitter burned down three days after Mr Davis bought the Marconi type–702 set on November 26. The area could not receive pictures again until 1946."
.. perhaps
America, Home of the Brave.
a device I can use my Wii on without getting bleeding eyes!
"The nearby Crystal Palace and its transmitter burned down three days after Mr Davis bought the Marconi type–702 set on November 26. The area could not receive pictures again until 1946."
That, to me, is the definition of bleeding edge.
Rear projection (ok, bottom projection) and a flat screen (the mirror is flat, isn't it?). Next you're going to tell me it is high def!
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
TV transmissions were moved to Alexandra Palace and continued up until the outbreak of war when there were almost 40,000 TV sets in London. Coverage was fairly widespread so I find it hard to believe that Mr Davis couldn't receive a picture in Dulwich.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Interesting use of a mirror. So are the people correctly oriented because of this? (IIRC everything in TV land is reverse due to the camera recording)
...does it come with 3D glasses?
Am I the only one who read this and immediately thought of a Doctor Who episode? I can't recall the name, but I know it was a David Tennant episode. It was also his first season as he was still travelling with Rose Tyler. Come on, Slashdot! I know you guys know!
Hungry! HUNGRY!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
All you could use at the time it was built.
"The Idiot's Lantern" from the 2006 series is the one you're thinking of... and yes, I immediately thought of it too.
What is a "television" in the first place? I'd heard about it from time to time -- mainly as something that old people watch, or that my parents used to talk about watching. One explanation I've gotten is that it's like "youtube with streaming-only, and a number of channels limited to the hundreds".
That must have been pretty boring.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Yeah, that's why it was so much harder to invent the telephone. You can invent only one television if you want, but you have to simultaneously invent two telephones.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
It was titled "The Idiot's Lantern" - series 2, episode 7.
That is all.
If you track down The Secret Life of Machines Series 1, The Television Set you can see this sort of set (perhaps even this very set) being demonstrated.
AIUI you wouldn't want to turn this on for very long, or at least not without a fire extinguisher handy. Some of the electronics (capacitors I think?) are made of paper and after all this time have dried out and are prone to catching fire.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
It had enough to meet the demands of the average 1936 television viewer.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
None. But at least it didn't suffer from DRM.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What a crap article, they couldn't even find a http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/marconi-702-hd.jpg of the thing.
here's some more technical info on this TV.
Also I guess we have to define what it means to still be working. Did the UK make the conversion to all digital yet like the US, or are there still analog broadcasts?
If they haven't gone all digital, then it's possible that this set can still receive programming, whereas a set bought in the U.S. only a few years ago doesn't work without the addition of a converter box.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
They cost extra.
That looks like a CRT. Surely there is a working mechanical TV left somewhere in Brittain. One of those could be something like 10 years or so older! Maybe that is the oldest which can receive PAL?
I've got a working 701. And I'm not selling it. Or your offer should be really high!!!
With over the air down, he should have signed up for cable.
He's probably still on hold with Comcast.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
The television is one of those products which has had a price of about £100 to £1000 for more than 50 years. It is cool to see that it applies to the Marconi type 702 too!
>The nearby Crystal Palace and its transmitter burned down three days after Mr Davis bought the Marconi type–702 set on November 26.
Didn't I see that on Dr. Who?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You've obviously never lived in the UK! A quick history:
In 1982, most of the country had 4 TV channels. About 15 years later, some parts of the country got a (really bad) 5th. That was never a problem though, because UK viewers only ever watched countdown, the news, and neighbours. More channels were never really wanted.
The biggest problem with cable (and sky) in the UK, has always been vorderman. Basically you'd get no more vorderman with cable than you would with terrestrial, so it wasn't worth the extra expense. Even after digital TV started broadcasting, the uptake remained slow, because again, no more vorderman for your money. Early on in digital TV broadcasting, ITV digital collapsed spectacularly, and it was only in the aftermath of the collapse that people realised how the vorderman effect worked. Sandwich in some vorderman in the ad break with some vague maths (insurance quotes, loans, anything really), and the channel would succeed. If you graph the number of digital TV viewers in the UK against the amount of vorderman exposure, there is a direct and striking correlation between the two...
"There are more 18th century Stradivarius violins in existence that pre-war TVs "
I think THAT is telling. Were there ANY television broadcasts in the US in 1936? I think there were some experimental stations in NYC, and maybe in LA but other than that.....
The MPAA has sent a team of lawyers to the auction to ensure the set is not used and only for display. The lead attorney said "When considering any potential copyright infringement penalties we must remember that this equipment is able to receive entertainment on many frequencies, each of which could be used to transmit copyright infringing media. This set quite clearly shows that the analog hole is still used and needs to be closed".
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Ah, but the picture was upside down! A carefully placed content-copying inversion decrypting device, ãfYãf©ãf¼, was used. (That's mirror in English)
If you buy this as an antique do you still have to pay the tv tax?
And it was dreadful, as every close-up of the "vintage" TV sets showed the RGB shadowmask of the colour monitors they had stuck inside them.
I am not sure if you are joking or not. Your logic seems sound and my own personal experience seems in agreement. Do you have a regular newsletter?
In 1982, most of the country had 4 TV channels.
Well, the fourth only arrived at the end of 1982. I'm old enough- just- to remember when there were only 3 UK channels (damn, I'm old), and Channel 4 was a big deal to me.
You couldn't imagine anyone really giving a t**s about a new channel these days... partly because there are so many, but also because they're a bit of a muchness. There are God knows how many channels on Freeview, yet not one proper music channel, because the "music" channels discovered they get more viewers when they repeat years old non-music programmes that we've seen before anyway. I mean, we already have E4, did 4 Music really have to be part-sacrificed to become its ersatz second-rate sibling?
vorderman [..] vorderman [..] vorderman [etc.]
Not a big fan of the mercenary exploiter of her own "I'm brainy because I can do arithmetic" image then?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The problem was, and still is to some extent, that people were blinded by numbers. Televisions would be sold boasting 100 and even 200 vordermans per second (vps), when in reality most people couldn't tell the difference with a 50 vps set. All the time people were being told that high vorderman capability was the future when in reality it was a dead-end technology. I'm not usually an early adopter but when the first vorderman-free TVs came on the market I was first in line.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
that the Brits even made televisions. I thought they could never figure out how to make them leak oil. Thank you, I'm here all week!
ought to be enough for anybody.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you