1925 – 1931
Reginald Berkeley’s The White Chateau, 11
November.
1927 Royal Charter establishes the non-commer-
cial British Broadcasting Corporation, licensed
to broadcast from 1 January. Th e BBC grew to be
the largest public service broadcasting organiza-
tion in the world.• (^) Th e Jazz Singer, using the Vitaphone synchro-
nized disc system, opens at the Warner Th eater
on Broadway, 6 October. Directed by Alan
Crosland and starring Al Jolson, the film is
generally acknowledged to have inaugurated
the age of sound cinema and marked the death
knell of silent movies. Th ere are only two talking
sequences in the fi lm and 281 words spoken, but
the reception the fi lm received on both sides of
the Atlantic was phenomenal.
• (^) The Lights of New York, also from Warner
Bros, was the fi rst all-talking feature fi lm. It was
premiered at New York’s Strand Th eater, 6 July
- Fox Movietone’s In Old Arizona, a Western
directed by Raoul Walsh, screened in December
1928 in Los Angeles, was the first all-talking
sound-on-film feature. The first all-talking
colour fi lm was Warner Bros’ On With the Show,
screened at New York’s Wintergardens, 1929.
1928 On 9 February John Logie Baird makes the
first international TV transmission, sending
30-line images of his own face from London by
land-line to the transmitting station G2KZ at
Coulsdon, Surrey, and then across the Atlantic
to a receiving set manned by his assistant, Ben
Clapp, at Hartsdale, New York State. On 3 July
Baird became the fi rst to transmit television in
colour. Employing a Nikow scanning-disc with
red, blue and green fi lters he screened red and
blue scarves, a lighted cigarette and red roses.
Baird was to be the fi rst to demonstrate high-
definition colour – at the Dominion Theatre,
London, on 4 February 1938.
• (^) Walt Disney release Steam Boat Willie, the fi rst
animated fi lm using synchronous sound.
1929 Radar invented, by Scotsman Robert
Wat s on-Watt.
• (^) UK: fi rst issue of the Communist Daily Worker.
1931 Experiments in electronic high-defi nition
TV transmission are carried out by an EMI
research team at Hayes, Middlesex, under the
direction of Russian-born Isaac Shoenberg.
Th e EMI system was demonstrated to the BBC
in the following year – a fi lm of the Changing
of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, viewed on
a 130-line cathode ray receiver with a fi ve-inch
square screen.
• (^) RCA Victor launches the 33⅓rpm long-playing
record. Th e fi rst recording was of Beethoven’s
casting, followed in 1925 with the setting up of
the Crawford Committee from which emerged
the prime principles governing public service
broadcasting in the UK until the coming of
commercial TV – monopoly, funding by licence,
administration by an independent public corpo-
ration. Th ese remain the guiding principles of
public service broadcasting.
• (^) Publication in the Daily Mail of the notorious
Zinoviev Letter, a fake, now considered to have
emanated from the UK’s own secret service,
MI6.
• (^) Felix the Cat becomes the fi rst fi lm character
to be merchandized. Licences issued on behalf
of Felix’s creator Pat Sullivan for Felix to ‘feature’
on packaging and later as a soft toy.
1925 Using a mechanical scanner for transmitting
and receiving, Scotsman John Logie Baird (with
others) creates the fi rst television pictures on 30
October. Baird transmitted an image with grada-
tions of light and shade using a primitive amal-
gam of parts, including an empty biscuit-box
for the lamphouse. For test purposes a dummy’s
head was used, to be replaced shortly afterwards
by 15-year-old offi ce boy William Taynton, who
consented to be the fi rst star of TV for the fee of
half a crown.
• (^) Baird demonstrated his invention to the press
on 7 January 1926, and gave a public demonstra-
tion on 27 January for members of the Royal
Institution. Baird’s mechanical system was soon
to be overtaken by electronic TV transmis-
sion, fi rst developed in Los Angeles by Philo T.
Farnsworth in July 1929, though a more practical
system developed by Russian-born Vladimir
Zworykin of Westinghouse showed the way
ahead. All modern TV systems derive from
Zworykin’s Kinescope and the Ionoscope, the
camera tube he developed in 1933.
• (^) Lionel Guest and H.O. Merriman of London
apply their electrical recording process to record
the burial service of the Unknown Warrior at
Westminster Abbey, proving that it was possible
to substitute a microphone for the studio horn,
thus location recording was born. Th e process
was not pursued commercially, but location
recording was set in progress in both the US and
the UK in the same year. Th e all-electric record
player, with loudspeaker amplifi cation instead of
the usual horn, was the Brunswick Panatrope,
made by the Brunswick Company of Iowa. Th is
year also saw the introduction of the automatic
record-changer, built by 20-year-old Eric Water-
worth of Hobart, Tasmania.
• (^) First issue of the New Yorker.
• (^) BBC broadcast fi rst full-length play for radio,