1937 in television
The year 1937 in television involved some significant events.
Below is a list of television-related events during 1937.
Events
- January 19 – BBC Television broadcasts The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas from its London station, the first play written for television.[1]
- February 6 – The BBC Television service discontinues the Baird system in favour of the Marconi-EMI 405 lines system.
- March 9 – Experimental broadcasting from Shabolovka Ulitsa television center, in Moscow (USSR).
- May – Gilbert Seldes becomes the first television critic, with his Atlantic Monthly magazine article, the "Errors of Television".
- May 12 – The BBC use their outside broadcast unit for the first time, to televise the coronation of George VI. A fragment of this broadcast is one of the earliest surviving examples of British television – filmed off-screen at home by an engineer with an 8 mm cine camera. A brief section of this footage was used in a programme during the week of the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II, and this latter programme survives in the BBC's archives.
- May 14 – The BBC broadcasts a thirty-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known instance of a Shakespeare play televised. Among the cast are Peggy Ashcroft and Greer Garson.
- May 15 – RCA demonstrates projection television, with images enlarged to 8 by 10 feet, at the Institute of Radio Engineers convention.
- June 21 – Wimbledon Championships (tennis) first televised by the BBC.
- July 10 – High definition television with 455 lines is first shown in France at the International Exposition, Paris.
- September – High definition television broadcasts are sent from a new 30 kW (peak power) transmitter below the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
- November 9 – Bell Telephone Laboratories transmits television signal of 800 kHz bandwidth on a coaxial cable laid between New York and Philadelphia.
- November 11 (Armistice Day) – BBC Television devotes the evening to a broadcast of Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff (1928, set on the Western Front (World War I) in 1918), the first full-length television adaptation of a stage play. Reginald Tate plays the lead, Stanhope, a rôle he has performed extensively in the theatre.[2][3]
- December 31 – By this time, 2,121 television sets have been sold in England.
- CBS announces their efforts to develop television broadcasts.
Debuts
Television shows
Births
- February 1 – Garrett Morris, actor and comedian, Saturday Night Live
- April 22 – Jack Nicholson, actor
- June 1 – Morgan Freeman, actor
- June 2 – Sally Kellerman, actress
- June 3 – Edward Winter, American actor and director (d. 2001)
- July 12 – Bill Cosby, actor and comedian
- August 8 – Dustin Hoffman, actor
- November 21 – Ingrid Pitt, actress (died 2010)
- December 21 – Jane Fonda, actress
- December 29 – Barbara Steele, actress
References
- ↑ Fisher, David (2011-12-30). "1937". Chronomedia. Terra Media. Retrieved 2014-01-13.
- ↑ "Televised Drama – Journey's End". The Times. London. 1937-11-12. p. 14.
- ↑ Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press; British Film Institute. p. 8. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.