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.
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