please empty your brain below
"Walls Made of Asbestos
It's a big place, this studio. If you have a tape-measure eye you say to yourself Why, this measures seventy feet by thirty, and it is, unless
my estimating faculty has forsaken me, some twenty-five feet high '.
The walls attract your attention. They look as if they are made of breeze blocks. But you touch them and know better. An asbestos compound, of course. Just the stuff for absorbing sound. "
The Baird system (which won the toss for the first transmission did suffer from flicker, but the EMI 405 line system was the one regarded as the "high definition" of its time.
Maybe if the BBC had gone to Crystal Palace and they had good security and safety the place might not have burnt down!
Although generally correct, I still am disheartened that the facts are incorrect, for example "it was anything but high definition by current standards - a flickering black and white display". 405 certainly is not flickery!
The Baird system also has gained 40 lines, I wish people checked their facts before putting pen to paper or publishing on the internet.
Trevor is quite correct about Baird's lines being 240, not 280. I have now amended my egregious error. Dave then continues...
Ah, but the opening broadcast was first in the (as you say, 240-line) Baird system, which would have been flickery - as demonstrated by Mike Barker's excellent demonstration of his restored dual-standard (240/405) set at BVWS events. At least it wasn't (as is so often the case) described as "grainy"!
...and Trevor concedes...
True enough Dave, and yes indeed the 240 line system was flickery...
What should have been said was that 405 was far superior and was not subject to flicker.
Lesson learned: always take care when stepping into the world of the technical.
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