| 1961 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
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Cultural highlights | Predictions made this year |
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| January 10 |
BBC news studio at Alexandra Palace starts to use remotely-controlled cameras. |
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| January 25 |
Newly inaugurated President John F Kennedy holds a live press conference on television. |
<> 1955 |
| January 25 |
Disney's feature-length animation 101 Dalmatians is released.
It has cost $4m to produce and employed 300 animation staff. |
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| January |
Australian Postmaster-General rules that all television
must be made in Australia, following lobbying by the Australian Film Producers Association. |
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| January |
Sony introduces the world's first transistorised videotape recorder, SV-201. |
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| January |
JVC announces a two-head helical scan colour videotape recorder, model 770.
Tape speed of 15 inches per second gives a recording time of 90 minutes. |
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| February 23 |
Hartford Phonevision Company is granted a licence for
a pay TV experiment in the US. |
> 1962 |
| March |
Stanford Research Institute (SRI) at Menlo Park, California, begins research into a
photographic television recording disc in conjunction with 3M. The aim is to produce
an inexpensive home video system. |
 The quest for home video |
| early |
BLC Films is formed in the UK by British Lion
and Columbia for joint marketing of their film productions. |
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| April 12 |
The first man to travel in space is Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. |
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| April 14 |
 First live television pictures from Moscow—of the heroic return of pioneer cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin—are seen in London. |
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| April 29 |
Westward Television begins broadcasting as South-West England ITV contractor from Stockland Hill and Caradon Hill transmitters. |
> 1980 December 28 |
| April |
Television service starts in Uruguay. |
Television service start dates |
| May 1 |
Television Advertisement Duty is introduced in the UK. |
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| May 9 |
Newton Minow, newly appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), makes a speech about the 'vast wasteland' of television. Coincidentally, US Vice-President says US television is 'the greatest single achievement in communication that anybody or any area of the world has ever known'. |
Read Minow's speech |
| May 27 |
Further education television broadcasts introduced in UK by the BBC. |
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| May |
Ampex demonstrates its Colortec colour recovery system for compensating timing errors in the composite colour signal. |
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| June |
Television service starts in New Zealand. |
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| July 19 |
TWA introduces regular in-flight movies in the first-class section in New York-Los Angeles flights. |
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| August 22 |
First UK public demonstration of live colour television at Earl's Court Radio Show in London. |
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| September 1 |
Border Television begins broadcasting as ITV contractor for the English-Scottish border region from a purpose-built television centre in Carlisle. |
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| September |
US television network NBC begins its series Saturday Night at the Movies with 31 post-1950 Fox movie titles. |
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| September |
Kodak announces a new method for direct electron-beam recording on silver halide film. This anticipates the recording techniques used for CBS's EVR system. |
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| September |
At the Berlin Radio Show (Funkausstellung) German consumer electronics manufacturer Loewe demonstrates its Optacord 500 videotape recorder. |
The quest for home video: Loewe Optacord 500 |
| September 30 |
Grampian Television begins broadcasting as ITV contractor for the north of Scotland, last of the mainland UK areas to have commercial television. |
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| October 1 |
CTV Television Network is inaugurated in Canada with eight newly licensed stations, following removal of the restrictions on commercial television and the single-station policy. |
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| October 26 |
International Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations agreed in Rome. |
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| November 8 |
 In a half-hour session at Cine and Tele Sound Studios in Bayswater, London, Bing Crosby records the soundtrack for a one-minute television commercial for Shell ('You can be sure of Shell'). |
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| November |
Five-month strike by members of British Actors' Equity, the actors' union, begins in protest against prevailing television employment conditions. |
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| December 1 |
First UK unmanned automatic ‘satellite’ (relay) transmitter opened by ITA at Selkirk, Scotland. |
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| December |
Television services start in Ireland and South Korea. |
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| • |
Associated Television opens a new television production facility, ATV Studio Centre, in the converted National Film Studios in Eldon Avenue, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. As a consequence it vacates several temporary sites: Highbury Studios and the Wood Green centre and the Hackney Empire. |
 Click on camera for more |
| • |
Television services start in Kuwait and Zambia. |
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| • |
International Radio Regulations Stockholm Agreement allocates frequencies for development of Ultra High Frequency (UHF) television broadcasting in Europe, replacing 1952 Stockholm Agreement (qv). |
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| • |
RCA introduces compact stand-alone transistorised videotape recorder TR-22. |
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| • |
Siemens and Halke of Munich develop a magnetic video disc for recording single frames. |
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| • |
First commercially made laser sold to Texas Instruments
by Trion Instruments, company founded by Lloyd Cross. |
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| • |
Advertel of Canada designs world’s first electronic videotape editing machine. |
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| • |
Joint Industry Committee for Television Advertising Research (JICTAR) is set up in UK to replace the Television Audience Research Action Committee. |
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| • |
Ten commercial radio companies are registered in Northern Ireland. |
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| • |
First Indian film in Cinemascope is Pyar Ki Pyas; also made this year is the first wordless Indian film, Ingeet. |
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| • |
The 1953 CinemaScope production How to Marry a Millionaire, with an aspect ratio of 2.55:1, is shown on the NBC television network with a 4:3 aspect ratio, raising the issue of how best to show wide-screen films on television. |
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| • |
Nettlefold Studios at Walton-on-Thames near London is closed and soon demolished. |
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| • |
ABC Television opens a production studio at Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex on the Weir House site |
See also 1914, 1931,
1944 |
| • |
Over the next decade or so film-making begins to spread in Africa and other parts of the so-called Third World. This year:
• Nigeria: a short called My Father’s Burden, directed by Segun Olusola, who later becomes a senior executive in Nigerian television;
• Somalia: a short called The Love that Knows No Barrier, directed by Hosein Manrok. |
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| • |
Daily Mirror Newspapers buys Odhams Press, including Daily Herald and The People. |
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| • |
Sunday Telegraph launched in UK to compete with The Sunday Times and The Observer in quality Sunday newspaper market. |
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| • |
UK has 555,000 homes connected to cable and master antenna television (MATV) systems. |
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| • |
In a contracting market for subscription libraries, UK retail chain W H Smith closes its lending libraries. The subscribers are acquired by Boots Booklovers' Library. |
> 1966 |
