Sixty glorious years: The diamond jubilee of public service television broadcasting

The BBC opened the world's first regular public television service on 2nd November 1936. Using what was by today's standards primitive equipment it produced pictures of quite remarkable quality for the time. Over the succeeding 60 years, the technological advances in all aspects of television broadcasting, from cameras through recording and special effects to distribution and transmission, have been nothing short of incredible. The paper presents an overview of the advances in the key areas over those six decades and acknowledges the role that engineers have played in bringing the fruits of these developments to the public at large.