Michael Watterson writes:
> 1985. I know one of the BBC engineers that was on site  of one the BBC
> 405 TX at switch off
> He is now an RTE engineer and was on site when an RTE VHF Band I or 405
> (not sure which) was turned off.
>=20
> RTE Still has 5 main and one relay Band III 625 analogue to cease in 2012
> >   so
> > >  it wouldn't have a picture.
> > >  Cheers
>=20
> Sold for a about 16K. It cost -L-99 in 1936. So with inflation the 16K
> isn't so great!
>=20
> Enthusiasts use 625 to 405 converters. A picture was shown on it at=20
> auction!

	That is neat or cool, as we say, here. What thing about
old television that I find interesting is that the United States
had a system almost identical to the UK 405-line system before
World War II. It went on the air in 1933 with a transmitter atop
the Empire State Building. The studios were in some other part
of New York City according to the wikipedia article I read and
the studio-transmitter link was a mixture of 170 MHZ air and
coax so it was ultramodern for 1933.

	The Audio was also AM like the 405-line system and the
video was at around 45 MHZ. The framing rate was 24 frames per
second so as to facilitate showing motion picture film.

	I suspect that the signal from that station would have
been audible and visible in many parts of the US especially
during the Summer Sporadic E season from May to August.

	I understand that a number of amateur radio operators
modified oscilloscopes to make television receiver displays in
that day so there might have been a few hearty souls here in the
central US who might have occasionally watched the signal from
New York when the bands were right.

	The article also said that the first transmissions were
at 243 lines of resolution but that in 1936, engineers realized
that they could double the resolution by going to a vestigial
SSB system similar to what analog TV was like up to now so they
ended up with a 440-line picture.

	I have a feeling that during strong Sporadic E openings
and maybe even F2 propagation, the signals from New York and
England may have been interference sources to one another.

	One final comment. Several years ago, CNN had a weekly
"Science and Technology Week" show that I had on automatic
recording at my house. One segment was a story about a man in
the UK who had found a phonograph record in his library from the
1920's or 1930's. One side of the disk had a buzz saw sound on
it and the other side was a pannel discussion by several now
obscure politicians whose pictures were shown on the album
cover.

	There may have also been a picture of a Baird mechanical
camera and the buzz-saw was Baird video of the conference.

	The man wrote a computer program to read the Baird
signal and was able to restore the video which probably looked
much better than it ever did originally.

	In the late twenties, WOR radio in New York City would
show movie clips via the Baird system on Sunday afternoons.
Apparently, they would talk a little and then you would activate
your Baird system receiver and watch the clip on it's 2-inch
orange screen while trying to manually sync the scanning.

	Those who just had radios probably found it all a bit
annoying.
--=20
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