| 1937 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
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| January 1 |
First commercially produced short films are shown on BBC Television. |
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| January 3 |
BBC Arabic Service begins, in competition
with Italy's Radio Bari. [0054] |
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| January 4 20:00 |
French television begins regular daily half-hour broadcasts at 20:00-20:30 from the Eiffel Tower. |
ą 1940 |
| January 19 |
The Underground Murder Mystery by
J Bissell Thomas, the first play written for television, is broadcast by the BBC. |
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| January 30 |
Last transmission of Baird's 240-line television system by the BBC from Alexandra Palace. |
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| January 31 |
In the UK, 400 television sets are now in use. Prices of receivers have already started to
fall, by up to a third: EMI and HMV from 95gns (£99.75) to 60gns (£63), Baird from 85gns (£89.25) to
55gns (£57.75). |
 Television receivers of 1937 |
| February 6 |
From today, in accordance with the previous
day's announcement in Parliament by the Postmaster General, the Marconi-EMI 405-line
system is used exclusively by BBC Television until the opening of BBC2 in 1964. |
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| February 11 |
Philco Radio and Television Corporation stages
the first demonstration of a television system (441-line
30 fps, 60 fields interlaced 2:1) at the Germantown Cricket Club in
Philadelphia, after three months of development of the new line format. |
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| February 20 |
Rank Organisation is incorporated in the UK. |
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| March 13 |
BBC Television shows its first foreign-language short
film without subtitles but with an English commentary, sponsored by Air France. |
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| March 31 |
Standard Telegraph and Cables applies for a patent
on a magnetic tape system for recording video signals in which 'a record of sound or of
light tone values of a picture or view in variations of magnetisation [causes] variations
of the output current of the cathode-ray tube, which are proportional and in phase with the
variations of magnetisation of the tape'. |
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| April |
Report on film finance is delivered to the Governor of
the Bank of England on initiative of the chief industrial adviser to government. |
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| April |
 Cinecittą film studio in Italy is opened by Benito Mussolini. The slogan
in the background is Mussolini's 1922 statement about the cinema.
[Photo source: Istituto Luce] |
 Mussolini quotation |
| May 2 |
BBC Television Service takes delivery of two mobile
television units built by AEC and equipped by Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company. |
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| May 7 |
Explosion of Hindenburg airship
at Lakehurst, New Jersey, is reported ‘live’ by Herbert Morrison of WLS Chicago, who
spontaneously uses the phrase 'Oh, the humanity!' at the sight of the burning wreck. A wax
disc recording being made by WLS engineer Charles Nelson as a routine assignment for later
use is broadcast on the NBC Red and Blue networks that evening—the first ever pre-recorded programme on
NBC. The incident is largely responsible for ending the passenger airship travel era, although
the 13 passengers (out of 36 fatalities) are the only ones who died in 30 years of travel. |
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| May 9 |
Edgar Bergen and his
dummy Charlie McCarthy get their own radio show. [The success
of ventriloquism on radio: one of life's greatest mysteries.] Bergen's greatest memorial is
perhaps his contribution to mass panic in the USA 18 months later. |
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| May 12 |
BBC Television transmits King George VI’s
Coronation procession, the first official outside broadcast and use of an OB van, seen by 50,000 viewers. |
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| May 12 |
R R Law and Dr Vladimir Zworykin of RCA give a demonstration
of large-screen television to the Institute of Radio Engineers in the USA. The projector uses a
Kinescope tube, the designers having recognised that a different type of tube is
needed for projection television than for domestic receivers. |
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| June |
Post Office and the BBC reject a plan by Cinema-Television
Ltd to install large-screen television in Gaumont cinemas in UK, using the Baird system. |
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| June 10-September 20 |
Television Exhibition at South Kensington, London, is visited by 250,000 people. |
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| June 20 |
Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance
operetta is televised from station W2XBS in New York. |
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| June 21 |
First day of the Wimbledon tennis championships is televised by BBC. |
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| July 26-August 18 |
BBC Television is off the air completely. |
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| July 30 |
American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA) is
formed and affiliated to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to represent all
performers on radio except musicians, who have their own union. |
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| August 18 |
Station W1X0J in Boston, Massachusetts, is granted the first
FM radio broadcasting licence in the US by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). |
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| September |
Germany's videophone network is extended to Nuremberg in time
for the annual Nazi party rally, which is to be relayed via the landlines. |
ą 1938 |
| October 9 |
BBC televises its first motor race, the Imperial Trophy Road Race at Crystal Palace, London. |
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| October 19 |
CBS radio debuts newspaper drama Big Town,
starring Edward G Robinson and Claire Trevor. Its slogan: 'The freedom of the press is a
flaming sword. Use it justly. Hold it high. Guard it well.' |
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| October 29 |
Britain's Postmaster General announces
that the BBC will broadcast in other languages, corrected by the Chancellor of
the Exchequer to an invitation to the BBC to broadcast in Spanish and Portuguese
to South America. [0054] |
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| November 13 |
NBC forms its own symphony orchestra for radio broadcasts. |
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| November |
BBC Television makes the first on-air use of the
Super Emitron camera tube for an outside broadcast. |
|
| December 12 |
 NBC begins experiments with a mobile television unit in the streets of New York
[right]. |
Click on picture for more about the RCA Telemobiles |
| December 20 |
Adolf Hitler's Christmas present from
propaganda minister Josef Goebbels: film prints of 12 Mickey Mouse cartoons. 'He is very
happy about these treasures,' Goebbels writes in his diary this day, 'which will hopefully
bring him much fun and relaxation.' |
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| December 21 |
Premiere of Walt Disney’s first feature length animated film, Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs at the Cathay Circle Theatre, Los Angeles, after three years’ work
involving over 300 animation staff. |
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| December 25 |
NBC radio presents the first Symphony of the Air, with Arturo Toscanini conducting. |
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| December 31 |
Just over 2,000 television sets have been sold in UK by the end of the year. |
|
| l |
Fernseh demonstrates direct-projection
large-screen television with a screen size of four square metres. |
Cinema-television |
| l |
Bell Laboratories uses steel tape recorder to demonstrate stereo audio at World Fair. |
|
| l |
Arriflex 35 film camera,
made by Arnold & Richter in Munich, is shown publicly at the
Leipzig Fair. It incorporates the first mirror-reflex shutter: the angled shutter blade
has a mirrored surface on the side towards the lens during the part of the cycle when the
shutter obscures the film so that light is reflected through a path to the viewfinder,
allowing the operator a constant view of the exact scene being recorded on the film.
Hitherto the viewfinder has shown only a view affected by parallax distortion. |
|
| l |
The Odeon cinema chain in the UK now comprises 220 sites. |
|
| l |
British International Pictures (BIP) becomes Associated-British Picture Corporation (ABPC). |
|
| l |
Finnish Film Distributors’ Association formed. |
|
| l |
American film exports to the USSR
have virtually ceased. [0036] |
|
| l |
Highbury Studio is built in Islington, London by
producer Maurice J Wilson, who leases it for independent productions. |
|
| l |
MP Studios, formed by producer J Banberger, takes over the
former Consolidated Studios at Elstree, which are mainly used for production of
‘quota quickies’. |
|
| l |
Receivers are appointed by Westminster Bank at British
producer JH Productions, headed by Julius Hagen, and its Twickenham Studios are sold
cheaply to Studio Holdings Trust and leased back to Hagen. |
|
| l |
In return for his financial support, J Arthur Rank gets
Gaumont-British to close its Shepherds Bush Studio and move production to Pinewood. |
|
| l |
Merton Park Studios is formed to own the Sound Services
studio (see 1931). |
|
| l |
British screen and stage star
Jack Buchanan buys Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London. |
|
| l |
First British Technicolor feature film produced. |
|
| l |
First successful Indian colour
film production, Kisan Kanya (The Daughter of a Farmer), directed by Moti B Gidwani
for Imperial Film Company. Cinecolor is only used for one further film, Mother India
(1938) before being abandoned. |
|
| l |
First Hindi talkie without songs
is Navjawan (The Youth), produced by Jamshed Bomanji H Wadia (1901-1986) and
directed by Aspi (1911-disappeared 1986). |
|
| l |
First live radio cricket commentary in the West Indies is given by Ken Laughlin in Trinidad. |
|
| l |
British Ozaphane introduces the Duo-Trac
consumer audio reproducing system. The seven-inch reels of 4mm film carry two
tracks of variable-area optical sound, running for approximately 27 minutes. The
reels cost 12s 6d (62½p) each. |
There is a question about this |
| l |
Modern Talking Picture Service is incorporated. |
|
| l |
First use of Post Office balanced-pair cable in central
London for television outside broadcasts. |
|
| l |
Lip microphones are first used for BBC
broadcasts to reduce background noise. |
|
| l |
Radio Luxembourg introduces the idea of 'reportage ą trois faces',
linking radio programmes with concurrent cinema documentaries and press coverage of news topics. |
|
| l |
Canadian wireless receiving licence fee is increased to C$2.50. |
|
| l |
One in three American cars is fitted with a radio; a
quarter of all new cars are built with a radio already installed. |
|
| l |
Bing Crosby records his first million-selling disc, Sweet Leilani, for
the film Waikiki Wedding. It wins the Academy Award for best film song of 1937. |
|
| l |
Inter-American Wavelength Conference in Havana, Cuba,
redistributes North American radio frequency allocations. |
|
| l |
Philips-Miller recording system introduced. |
|
| l |
AT&T transmits television signals
with 1MHz bandwidth over its coaxial cable between New York
and Philadelphia. The company decides there is no longer a future in mechanical television
and concentrates on developing transmission systems for all-electronic television. |
ą 1939 |
| l |
Cosmic radiation is examined using photography by Marietta Blau in Vienna. |
|
| l |
Leading UK newspaper circulations: Daily Express
2.204m, Daily Herald 2.032m, Daily Mail 1.579m, Daily Mirror 1.328m; The
Observer, quality Sunday paper, sells 208,000. |
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