Kingswood Warren houses the BBC's Research & Development Department - the huge satellite dish gives it away.
Think CVA for videotape recycling.
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The Geeks Of Kingswood Warren
The BBC's R&D department has quietly been at the forefront of broadcast technological development since the 1930s. They began exploring digital techniques as early as the 1960s, High Definition in the late 70s, and have always had a hand in the implementation of new techniques across the globe.
Housed in the impressive grounds of Kingswood Warren, R&D is the culmination of departmental mergers down the decades. From the conversion of the 405 line TV signal to 625 lines, the launch of colour, film and video tape recording, telecine and caption generation, transmission of television by radio links, transatlantic cable and satellite, teletext, DAB radio, DVB Television, High Definition and the use of the Internet as a broadcast medium, the department and its antecedents have helped pioneer the lot.
Getting Down To The Dirty In 1930
In April of 1930, H.L Kirke was appointed as Senior Research Engineer at the newly formed department. By the middle of the decade, tests were being done over the airwaves of the competing television systems from EMI and Baird. At their recommendation, the 405-line EMI electronic system was adopted and launched, beating it's electro-mechanical rival.
Meanwhile, researchers developed the world's first close-talking microphone. The L1 had a noise cancelling ribbon design, and allowed for broadcast quality speech.
Post War
Straight after the war, the department re-convened and immediately designed and introduced the Type D disk recorder. Less than a year later, the TV service was back up and running from Alexandra Palace. By 1947 early measurements were being made on the magnetic properties of recording tape, and in 1948, almost fifty years before they were implemented, their proposals for five TV channels were published.
As the decade drew to a close, as if all that was not enough, work commenced on a replacement for the L1 microphone - the L2, which was eventually developed commercially by STC and Coles - and a very simple colour television channel was set up.
Development Was Never Rationed
Clearly never ones to sit on their laurels, as they moved into the 1950s, comparison demonstrations were being made between the 405 line and 625 line television picture. A little later, at an open day, they exhibited colour television and high quality sound from magnetic tape.
By 1957, test transmissions for the 625 line format were being pumped out of Crystal Palace at UHF in Band V. And before the decade closed out, using equipment they had built, the first transatlantic television transmission was made using telephone cables. The occasion was the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway by President Eisenhower and the Queen.
The Queen was also the subject of another broadcasting landmark, when in 1953 her Coronation was recorded using suppressed frame telerecording equipment R&D had designed. (It also marked the launch of the next generation ribbon microphone, the PGS/1).
But spurred on by this success, and the obvious merits of magnetic tape, plus the advantages of being able to time delay and record shows, the department launched VERA. The Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus was the first video tape machine ever used by the BBC.
David Jones attends to VERA
This 1958 launch increased the drive to develop video tape as a viable medium, and eventually led to the Quadruplex system made by Ampex (see A Brief History of Video Tape). That same year, investigations into the use of transistors began, and by 1959, work started on using video tape as a storage medium for television pictures.
The Sixties Digital Revolution
Research Report No. T-127, "Digital Methods in Television", outlines the possibilities of digital television and digital storage for television signals as early as 1964.
A case is made for using magnetic tape digitally, three decades before it became a reality, and for broadcasting a digital spectrum thirty years ahead of its launch.
The theories posited exactly match the actual advances, from 256bit RGB colour coding, to upsampling and downsampling rates. The report concludes that while the idea is sound, it would take significant advances in hardware and massive reductions of cost before they could be implemented.
A footnote also postulates the digitization of the telephony service, something that indeed happened, and lead to the Internet and cable television services. Arguing that the systems could be used to transmit digital TV signals pre-dates broadband by many decades.
While their theories were sound, their actual inventions were even more revolutionary. Most of the decade was concerned with developing the color television signal for practical application. In 1962, a slide scanner designed by the team was used in the first transatlantic colour TV link, and field trials began at Crystal Palace to determine any problems involved with the 625 line system.
By 1965, tests had advanced enough to allow experimental colour PAL transmissions from the same location, and the following year this system was adopted as standard in the UK. Using the improvements the department had made to colour cameras, colour pictures of the General Election in 1966 were relayed to the USA using the Early Bird satellite.
BBC2 goes RGB
On December 2nd 1967, BBC2 became the first European broadcaster to transmit a regular colour television service, followed in November 1969 by BBC1, while all the while investigations were under way into colour optical recording.
1 9 7 0 Are Just Digits
While the world obsessed with flowers, the department really began to explore to possibilities of zeros and ones. As the decade opened, work commenced on a digital line-store standards convertor. This would allow for signals to be converted with ease - so US pictures could play on UK equipment for example.
In 1971, the Research Department gave the world's first public demonstration of digital sound recording of stereo. At the same time, early experiments began on digital video recording, and two years later, they introduced the world to the first ever digital television recorder at the International Broadcasting Convention.
By the mid-70s digital television signals were being transmitted first at 120 Mbit/s between Guildford and Portsmouth, before a refined 60 Mbit/s transmission was made via INTELSAT. Then, again at the IBC, in 1978, they demonstrated the first broadcast quality PAL digital television pictures. As the decade drew to a close, digital sound was being bounced off of satellites, and the world's first commercial digital audio recorder was launched by the BBC and 3M.
CEEFAX as seen from an operators viewpoint
All the while, another type of digital revolution was underway. Early CEEFAX tests began in earnest, and the combination of interactivity and random access information can probably account for the final emergence of the Internet and red-button services.
The BBC On Your Computer In The 1980s?
Well, not quite a website, but the Acorn BBC Microcomputer. Launched in 1981 as part of the BBC Computer Literacy Project, the BBC Micro can probably take credit for the massive increase in computer literacy - as well as the foundations for multiplayer gaming using it's Econet capability. A BBC Micro also provided the base for Quantel's Harry (see also A Video Editing Timeline), one of the world's first non-linear editing machines.
Did you set up a lemonade business? Or play Chuckie Egg?
Indeed, much of what R&D were working on during the shoulder pad era would lead to digital desktop production. The department's graphics computer "ERIC" was licensed to Logica who produced the Flair tablet, while the Digital Stills Slide Store grabbed images from the screen. Film dirt detection was pioneered at this time too, as well as Video Watermarking, both now commonly used to clean up scratches and prevent net piracy.
The Logica Flair Tablet
At the same time, computer processing of television pictures began in earnest, allowing the eventual manipulation of signals in non-real time. As the decade drew to a close, digital audio editing equipment went on trial at Broadcasting House, after it had been successfully demonstrated the year before.
Interestingly, it was the boffins at Kingswood Warren that finally found the spectrum for the 5th UHF TV Channel, allowing for the preservation of current networks and future expansion.
And work began on High Definition Television as early as 1982. The first real breakthrough came with their development of DATV. Digitally Assisted Television was a bandwidth reduction system which made HD an achievable reality. Within the year, they were demonstrating HDTV picture storage, and the high line rate monitor at the IBC in Brighton. In 1989, the first digital recordings in HD were made at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, the FA Cup Final and the Proms, using a multiplex of D1 recorders.
Ninety Percent Done
As Margaret Thatcher left office, much of the theory from the sixties was being realised in greater detail. High Definition continued to be tested and refined, while Digital Radio and Digital Television began to become a reality.
The first low power tests of Digital Terrestrial Television were carried out in Crystal Palace in 1992, following on from the launch of NICAM Stereo on BBC2, a direct result of work the department was doing in the eighties. Within a year, a high power field trial of Digital TV was begun, again at Crystal Palace. An HDTV signal was successfully broadcast, and was even received where traditional PAL reception was very poor.
Crystal Palace Transmitter
All this work led to the standards for DVB, and by 1996 the Digital Television Pilot was set up. Two years later, the BBC launched it's digital satellite television service in June. Then in November, the DTT service commenced. The department played key roles in the infrastructure for both. Meanwhile, they were designing the domestic digital recorders that sit in most people's homes today.
What's Analogue Daddy?
With the new millennium came greater processing power at an affordable price. This meant that for the first time, desktop computers were capable of handling content for film and television. R&D is continually seeking ways to ensure the full benefits of this.
Elsewhere, they launched their speech recognition subtitling service in 2001, and won awards for their technical development of hardware that allowed for audio description.
And once again, the Queen proved a useful guinea pig, when during her Golden Jubilee, the first digital radio cameras were rolled out.
While in 2004 the Olympics were used to pilot a multicast service that streamed live video over the Internet, realising an afterthought from their report in the sixties.
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The BBC's R&D department has quietly been at the forefront of broadcast technological development since the 1930s. They began exploring digital techniques as early as the 1960s, High Definition in the late 70s, and have always had a hand in the implementation of new techniques across the globe.
Housed in the impressive grounds of Kingswood Warren, R&D is the culmination of departmental mergers down the decades. From the conversion of the 405 line TV signal to 625 lines, the launch of colour, film and video tape recording, telecine and caption generation, transmission of television by radio links, transatlantic cable and satellite, teletext, DAB radio, DVB Television, High Definition and the use of the Internet as a broadcast medium, the department and its antecedents have helped pioneer the lot.
Getting Down To The Dirty In 1930
In April of 1930, H.L Kirke was appointed as Senior Research Engineer at the newly formed department. By the middle of the decade, tests were being done over the airwaves of the competing television systems from EMI and Baird. At their recommendation, the 405-line EMI electronic system was adopted and launched, beating it's electro-mechanical rival.
Meanwhile, researchers developed the world's first close-talking microphone. The L1 had a noise cancelling ribbon design, and allowed for broadcast quality speech.
Post War
Straight after the war, the department re-convened and immediately designed and introduced the Type D disk recorder. Less than a year later, the TV service was back up and running from Alexandra Palace. By 1947 early measurements were being made on the magnetic properties of recording tape, and in 1948, almost fifty years before they were implemented, their proposals for five TV channels were published.
As the decade drew to a close, as if all that was not enough, work commenced on a replacement for the L1 microphone - the L2, which was eventually developed commercially by STC and Coles - and a very simple colour television channel was set up.
Development Was Never Rationed
Clearly never ones to sit on their laurels, as they moved into the 1950s, comparison demonstrations were being made between the 405 line and 625 line television picture. A little later, at an open day, they exhibited colour television and high quality sound from magnetic tape.
By 1957, test transmissions for the 625 line format were being pumped out of Crystal Palace at UHF in Band V. And before the decade closed out, using equipment they had built, the first transatlantic television transmission was made using telephone cables. The occasion was the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway by President Eisenhower and the Queen.
The Queen was also the subject of another broadcasting landmark, when in 1953 her Coronation was recorded using suppressed frame telerecording equipment R&D had designed. (It also marked the launch of the next generation ribbon microphone, the PGS/1).
But spurred on by this success, and the obvious merits of magnetic tape, plus the advantages of being able to time delay and record shows, the department launched VERA. The Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus was the first video tape machine ever used by the BBC.
David Jones attends to VERA
This 1958 launch increased the drive to develop video tape as a viable medium, and eventually led to the Quadruplex system made by Ampex (see A Brief History of Video Tape). That same year, investigations into the use of transistors began, and by 1959, work started on using video tape as a storage medium for television pictures.
The Sixties Digital Revolution
Research Report No. T-127, "Digital Methods in Television", outlines the possibilities of digital television and digital storage for television signals as early as 1964.
A case is made for using magnetic tape digitally, three decades before it became a reality, and for broadcasting a digital spectrum thirty years ahead of its launch.
The theories posited exactly match the actual advances, from 256bit RGB colour coding, to upsampling and downsampling rates. The report concludes that while the idea is sound, it would take significant advances in hardware and massive reductions of cost before they could be implemented.
A footnote also postulates the digitization of the telephony service, something that indeed happened, and lead to the Internet and cable television services. Arguing that the systems could be used to transmit digital TV signals pre-dates broadband by many decades.
While their theories were sound, their actual inventions were even more revolutionary. Most of the decade was concerned with developing the color television signal for practical application. In 1962, a slide scanner designed by the team was used in the first transatlantic colour TV link, and field trials began at Crystal Palace to determine any problems involved with the 625 line system.
By 1965, tests had advanced enough to allow experimental colour PAL transmissions from the same location, and the following year this system was adopted as standard in the UK. Using the improvements the department had made to colour cameras, colour pictures of the General Election in 1966 were relayed to the USA using the Early Bird satellite.
BBC2 goes RGB
On December 2nd 1967, BBC2 became the first European broadcaster to transmit a regular colour television service, followed in November 1969 by BBC1, while all the while investigations were under way into colour optical recording.
1 9 7 0 Are Just Digits
While the world obsessed with flowers, the department really began to explore to possibilities of zeros and ones. As the decade opened, work commenced on a digital line-store standards convertor. This would allow for signals to be converted with ease - so US pictures could play on UK equipment for example.
In 1971, the Research Department gave the world's first public demonstration of digital sound recording of stereo. At the same time, early experiments began on digital video recording, and two years later, they introduced the world to the first ever digital television recorder at the International Broadcasting Convention.
By the mid-70s digital television signals were being transmitted first at 120 Mbit/s between Guildford and Portsmouth, before a refined 60 Mbit/s transmission was made via INTELSAT. Then, again at the IBC, in 1978, they demonstrated the first broadcast quality PAL digital television pictures. As the decade drew to a close, digital sound was being bounced off of satellites, and the world's first commercial digital audio recorder was launched by the BBC and 3M.
CEEFAX as seen from an operators viewpoint
All the while, another type of digital revolution was underway. Early CEEFAX tests began in earnest, and the combination of interactivity and random access information can probably account for the final emergence of the Internet and red-button services.
The BBC On Your Computer In The 1980s?
Well, not quite a website, but the Acorn BBC Microcomputer. Launched in 1981 as part of the BBC Computer Literacy Project, the BBC Micro can probably take credit for the massive increase in computer literacy - as well as the foundations for multiplayer gaming using it's Econet capability. A BBC Micro also provided the base for Quantel's Harry (see also A Video Editing Timeline), one of the world's first non-linear editing machines.
Did you set up a lemonade business? Or play Chuckie Egg?
Indeed, much of what R&D were working on during the shoulder pad era would lead to digital desktop production. The department's graphics computer "ERIC" was licensed to Logica who produced the Flair tablet, while the Digital Stills Slide Store grabbed images from the screen. Film dirt detection was pioneered at this time too, as well as Video Watermarking, both now commonly used to clean up scratches and prevent net piracy.
The Logica Flair Tablet
At the same time, computer processing of television pictures began in earnest, allowing the eventual manipulation of signals in non-real time. As the decade drew to a close, digital audio editing equipment went on trial at Broadcasting House, after it had been successfully demonstrated the year before.
Interestingly, it was the boffins at Kingswood Warren that finally found the spectrum for the 5th UHF TV Channel, allowing for the preservation of current networks and future expansion.
And work began on High Definition Television as early as 1982. The first real breakthrough came with their development of DATV. Digitally Assisted Television was a bandwidth reduction system which made HD an achievable reality. Within the year, they were demonstrating HDTV picture storage, and the high line rate monitor at the IBC in Brighton. In 1989, the first digital recordings in HD were made at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, the FA Cup Final and the Proms, using a multiplex of D1 recorders.
Ninety Percent Done
As Margaret Thatcher left office, much of the theory from the sixties was being realised in greater detail. High Definition continued to be tested and refined, while Digital Radio and Digital Television began to become a reality.
The first low power tests of Digital Terrestrial Television were carried out in Crystal Palace in 1992, following on from the launch of NICAM Stereo on BBC2, a direct result of work the department was doing in the eighties. Within a year, a high power field trial of Digital TV was begun, again at Crystal Palace. An HDTV signal was successfully broadcast, and was even received where traditional PAL reception was very poor.
Crystal Palace Transmitter
All this work led to the standards for DVB, and by 1996 the Digital Television Pilot was set up. Two years later, the BBC launched it's digital satellite television service in June. Then in November, the DTT service commenced. The department played key roles in the infrastructure for both. Meanwhile, they were designing the domestic digital recorders that sit in most people's homes today.
What's Analogue Daddy?
With the new millennium came greater processing power at an affordable price. This meant that for the first time, desktop computers were capable of handling content for film and television. R&D is continually seeking ways to ensure the full benefits of this.
Elsewhere, they launched their speech recognition subtitling service in 2001, and won awards for their technical development of hardware that allowed for audio description.
And once again, the Queen proved a useful guinea pig, when during her Golden Jubilee, the first digital radio cameras were rolled out.
While in 2004 the Olympics were used to pilot a multicast service that streamed live video over the Internet, realising an afterthought from their report in the sixties.
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