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1935 Chronokey Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references.


links and notes
  Cultural highlights | Predictions made this year  
January 1  Wirephoto service is started by Associated Press.  
January 4  Bob Hope makes his US network radio debut in The Intimate Revue.  
January 24  Canned beer—an essential accompaniment to a certain style of television viewing—is put on the market in Richmond, Virginia by the Krueger Brewing Company.  
January  Start of two-year experimental development period for BBC Television, timed to end on expiry of the BBC Charter.  
January 31  Report of the Television Committee (Selsdon) is published in the UK.  
February 20  First meeting of the BBC Advisory Council, chaired by the Archbishop of York.  
February 26  Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrates radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) at Daventry, England.  
February  The Reichsfilmarchiv is founded in Berlin. The opening is attended by Adolf Hitler.  
February  United Artists buys a 50 per cent share in UK’s Odeon cinema chain (150 screens—UK's third largest) for £50.  
February  Gerald Cock is appointed BBC's first Director of Television.  
February  Marconi television receiver is advertised in UK at 95gns (£99.75).  
March 22  Germans begin regular television service of Reichs Rundfunk from studios in Berlin on 180 lines using only telecine transmission of film and an intermediate film system. It is seen only in public viewing rooms seating 30 people each—11 in Berlin, one in Potsdam. At a Telecinema in Berlin there is a 4ft x 3ft screen and seating for 100 people. However, picture quality is not impressive. A mobile unit is used for daily contributions to Spiegel des Tages evening magazine programme. > August 19
•  Reichs Rundfunk equips a television outside broadcast vehicle [right]. Using intermediate film technology, the rotatable camera records onto standard 35mm film which is fed through the hollow plinth to processing equipment inside the van. The film is processed within 90 seconds and fed into the abtastgerät which scans in the image into 180 lines.  
April  NHK begins national schools radio broadcasting in Japan.  
April  Film criticism is ‘abolished’ in Germany by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels  in favour of ‘reporting’.  
May 29  German television transmitter station at Witzleben, Berlin is renamed Fernsender Paul-Nipkow in honour of the pioneer of mechanical television. In a speech on this day to the Television Congress in Berlin, Eugen Hadamowsky, head of the television department (Fernsehgemeinschaft) of the Reich Broadcasting Office (Reichsrundfunkkammer, RRK), declares television to be a German invention because of Nipkow's work. > 1940
May  National Film Archive is founded in the UK.  
June 1  Start of BBC lease on south-east corner of Alexandra Palace in north London for use as its television headquarters. A transmitter and aerial mast are installed (vision 45 Mz, sound 49.5 Mhz) and two studios: Studio A for EMI's 405-line system, Studio B for Baird's 240-line system.  
June  Baird video discs, marketed by Major Radiovision Company of Wigmore Street, London go on sale in Selfridges department store in London for 7s (£0.35) each. The six-minutes-a-side 78 rpm discs, which can be played back on the Baird 30-line mechanical system, last on the market for only four months as the low-definition system is about to be abandoned.  
June  Regular external short-wave radio broadcasting is established by NHK from Japan.  
July 17  Entertainment trade paper Variety runs a front page story that rural dwellers did not appreciate movies about their unsophisticated way of life with the headline 'Sticks Nix Hick Pix'. The headline, epitomising Variety style, became quotable; the story was rather insignificant. More interesting is the story below it: Stars Favor Own Picture Firm For Tax Conservation Purposes.  
July  Meeting of International Congress of Scientific and Applied Photography in Paris proposes a single 'universal perforation' standard be adopted for 35mm film worldwide.  
July 30  The first 10 Penguin books, paperback reprints of titles previously published in hardback, are issued by publisher Allan Lane, priced at 6d (2½p) each, the price of a packet of cigarettes. Despite trade scepticism, sales reach 3m copies in the first year, thanks in part to the brand image and standardised cover design.
George Orwell on the likely effect of the launch.
August 16  At Funkausstellung, Fernseh shows an apparatus for recording television images in a continuous film process direct from the cathode ray tube. It is not shown again at the following year's exhibition.  
August 16  German manufacturer AEG shows its K1 audio tape recorder at Funkausstellung in Berlin.  
August 19  Fire destroys the two ultra short-wave transmitters at Berlin Radio Show (Funkausstellung), causing closure of the Reichspost television service.  
September 1  French PTT begins experimental television transmissions from rue de Grenelle, Paris.  
September 11  Last transmission of Baird’s 30-line television system by the BBC.  
September 29  Marcel Bluestein-Blanchet buys out Radio LL and renames it Radio Cité, with a transmitter on 280.9m at Argenteuil.  
September  Screen quota legislation is introduced by the NSW Cinematograph Films (Australian Quota) Act, following the 1934 New South Wales Inquiry into the Film Industry. It requires that four per cent of films screened should be of Australian origin, as should five per cent of all films offered by distributors. Lack of compliance by distributors means that only eight of 29 films proposed by producers are actually made.  
October  Western Electric, subsidiary of AT&T, and RCA refuse permission for BBC televising of sound films licensed by them (ie, 90 per cent of US talkie output). Direct appeal from Reith to David Sarnoff of RCA reverses the decision.  
November 7  Royal National Institute for the Blind issues the first 'talking book', using 78rpm 12-inch discs running at 24rpm.  
November 8  Experimental television transmissions on 180 lines are broadcast on short wave from the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  
November 19  Concert by London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham at the Feierabendhaus in Ludwigshafen is recorded on magnetic tape by BASF (issued on cassette by Chandos in 1984).  
November  Conversion work begins on Alexandra Palace, London, to prepare for opening of BBC Television Service.  
December 10  Rolf Möller of Fernseh AG applies for a US patent for the continuous film recording system using a cathode ray tube.  
December 21  First newspaper crossword is published by New York World.  
December  Decca Records in the UK, including classical 12-inch releases,  are priced at 2s 6d (12½p). It is now making its own classical recordings and includes Sir Hamilton Harty and the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Henry Wood and the Queen's Hall Orchestra and the Boyd Neel Orchestra among its artistes.  
December  During the month, 51 Hammond organs, recently introduced by Laurens Hammond, a Chicago clockmaker, are installed in US churches.  
•  First experimental film with stereo sound is made in the UK by A D Blumlein at EMI, using two separate tracks in the space of the normal monophonic optical sound track.  
•  Carl Zeiss, the German optical company, invents a process for coating lens surfaces to improve image brightness. See also 1936
•  Fox Film Company merges with Darryl Zanuck and Joseph Schenck's Twentieth Century Pictures to form Twentieth Century-Fox.  
•  US Justice Department attempts to reform film distribution practices and to require separation of exhibition and distribution.  
•  General Film Distributors (GFD) set up in UK by Universal and C M Woolf.  
•  American producer Joe Rock takes the former Neptune Studios at Elstree on a long lease. He hires Gerry Blattner, son of the former lessee Ludwig Blattner, as his manager. [0019]  
•  Consolidated Studios at Elstree are bought by producer Julius Hagen, head of Twickenham Film Distributors, for his JH Productions, to add to resources for making 'quota quickies' at his Twickenham Studios. Hagen also acquires the newly built Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London. [0019]  
•  Criterion Film Productions is formed in UK by Douglas Fairbanks Jr and a consortium including Capt A Cunningham Reid, Lady Mountbatten’s brother-in-law.  
•  Soviet Comintern merges Mezhrabpom into Soyuzfilm, effectively ending the German connection. [0036]  
•  In Egypt Masr Bank backs the creation of Masr Studios, having sent technicians abroad for training.  
•  German camera manufacturer Askania introduces the 35mm Schulterkamera ('shoulder camera'), the first model designed to fit on the operator's shoulder. > 1947
•  Bell & Howell introduces the first single-8mm camera—Model 127. > 1936
•  Bell Laboratories in the US develops an audio recorder using steel tape.  
•  Reichs Rundfunk, the German broadcasting service, adopts the Stahltonmaschine (‘steel sound machine’), a steel tape recorder.  
•  Spending by British firms on advertising on continental commercial radio stations during the year is £315,000.[0061] < 1934
> 1936
•  AEG Magnetophone tape recorders are produced in Germany. They utilise plastic tape at 30 ips and come to be used for time-shifting radio broadcasts.  
•  Source: www.iptp.go.jpIn Japan, the Ministry of Communications Electric Research Section develops a 'television telephone apparatus' [right]. > 1936
•  Canadian experimenter William Hoyt Peck, president of Peck Television Corporation, uses his mechanical scanning system for five weeks of trial broadcasts in Montreal.
Peck forecasts success.
•  Walter Schneider at Agfa Filmfabrik realises that his technique for creating colour film stock can be applied to photographic emulsions instead of gelatin layers.  
•  Italian film school, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, is founded in Rome. Its first head is Luigi Chiarini.  
•  UK: 907m cinema admissions and rising; 111 new cinema opened (including 19 replacements), 27 of the net gain of 92 screens is attributable to circuits; 88 new film production companies are registered during the year.  
•  Rank gongThe Rank Organisation's on-screen identity of a strong man striking a gong is created. Bombardier Billy Wells strikes a papier maché gong three times, to which is synchronised the sound of a 30-inch Chinese tam-tam struck by percussionist James Blades (1901-1999).  
•  First wholly Belgian feature film production: Alleen voor U, directed by Jan Vanderheyden.  
•  First feature-length film production in US using three-strip Technicolor.  
•  Three-colour subtractive Kodachrome film is introduced in the US by Eastman Kodak.  
•  Presentation of Napoléon by Abel Gance with dialogue and sound effects at the Paramount Cinema, Paris. The soundtrack is in stereo, using the Gance-Debrie system.  
•  UK spending on commercial radio, broadcast from Europe for reception in England, amounts to £400,000.  
•  The Scophony Company moves from Dean Street, Soho to Thornwood Lodge, Campden Hill, London W8.  
•  Mae West is the highest paid American woman, earning $480,833 during the year.  
•  Radio service starts in the Gold Coast (Ghana).  
•  Radio Normandie switches English-language transmissions to 1304m LW and thereby improves reception across the Channel.  
•  In the UK, Robert Watson-Watt builds a radar unit.  
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Page updated 17 October 2011
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