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After the Coronation, the Suppressed Frame equipment was dismantled and reassembled in the new Telerecording Suite at Lime Grove, alongside the Moye-Mechau system. |
The "big wheel" This maintained the correct phase relationship between the displayed field on the tv monitor and the recording camera. In other words, a large "racking knob". He says, "It was given such prominence on this particular equipment because, (I believe I'm right in saying) the waveform generators of the many OB sources used on the Coronation transmission were not all, if any, locked together. Hence a cut from one source to another during the programme resulted in the 'new' signal appearing in any old phase relative to the one before. This did not worry the majority of the receivers in use at that time, but some took several seconds to settle down. The same applied, more or less, to the suppressed frame recorder and the operator was kept pretty busy winding the frame bar out of sight!" |
The Moye-Mechau system used a Mechau mirror drum and a Moye film camera to record both television frames. Before each and every recording session, the mirrors in the drums were cleaned (there was an access hatch in the drum for this). | ![]() |
![]() RCA |
Sound was recorded as before on the same film, but unlike the original Mechau telefilm gear at AP which had a simple variable density glow-lamp arrangement, each unit had a very good quality sound system. One was RCA, the other BAF, both producing variable area tracks.
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![]() BAF |
The Ashes..... |
As it happened, my machine was recording just at that moment, and I noticed that although I should have cleaned the monitor just before, I'd forgotten to wipe off my dirty handmarks..... So for many years afterwards, whenever that historic moment appeared on television, I could see my dirty handprint. Such is fame - or should it be notoriety....? | ![]() |
The "other" system |
The last TNR |
![]() In 1954 News Division, responsible for all the radio news, wanted to take control of news on television, so the much loved TNR was axed and "News & Newsreel" took its place, and initially it used a similar opening title, the letters going round the mast, instead of "BBC TELEVISION NEWSREEL" were now "BBC NEWS AND NEWSREEL". |
But TNR didn't just stop without a cry. Just before News Division took over tv news, the very last Television Newsreel ended in style! |
The final story in this very last edition was a re-run of the first ever story from 1948, about sailing ships, but the script was re-written, a masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek writing, with such not so oblique references to "steam" radio taking over such as "but when sail has to give way to steam"..... |
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News & Newsreel came from Studio A at AP. A new Telecine room had been built and had a nice 35mm Philips cinema projector but the 16mm machine was mounted on Dexion angle iron and each looked into (I think) a Pye tv camera. I was actually off duty the day it started, my shift not being on until Day 2, so I watched the, I have to say, rather inferior results in the BBC Hostel that evening. The night TV sound disappeared.....
One day, though, for some reason lost in the mists of antiquity, the main television sound feed to all transmitters throughout the country was, at some time during the day, inadvertently re-routed via AP racks. |
That evening, as usual after the news, everything at AP was switched off. This would have been a bit after 8pm. For the next 20 minutes, television sound over the whole of the nation slowly faded away getting fainter and fainter and more distorted until it was gone completely..... |
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It took whoever it was at Lime Grove quite a time to sort it out and restore the service..... Another unsolved mystery..... |
NEXT - |
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