From the film 'Television Comes to London', this song encapsulates the sense of wonder about this new technology, in a very British pre-war way! "A mighty maze of mystic magic rays is all about us in the gloom" indeed!
The song was specially-commissioned, actually called "Television" (or "Bringing Television to You"). The orchestra was the BBC Television Orchestra and the conductor was Hyam Greenbaum.
Does anyone know the name of the British newsreel that included this song? It covered more info from that first broadcast. Saw it on PBS about 30 years ago.
Adele Dixon,what a wonderful facinating looking lady she was ( I'm in love ) A lot of people would find this piece of television history a little twee , but I don't , the song that she sings so beautifully,has a wonderful haunting quality to it and she is simply magical,especially her eyes. If they knew then what a world giant television was to become from such humble beginings,I think it would have probably frightened them all at Aly Paly, that is quiet a legacy.As a broadcaster I salute them !
The audio-quality is quite poor, so here is the lyric. A mighty blaze of mystic magic rays Is all about us in the blue And in sight and sound they trace Living pictures out of space To bring our new wonder to you The busy world before you is unfurled It calms - It’s tears and laughter to One by one they play their part In this latest of the arts To bring new enchantment to you As by your fireside you sit The news will blip Upon on the silver screen And just for entertaining you With something new The stars will then be seen - so There’s joy in store The world is at your door It’s here for everyone to view Conjured up in sound and sight By the magic rays of light That bring Television to you
Corrections: "blaze" shuld be "maze", "It calms - it's tears and laughter to" should be "Its sounds, its tears and laughter too", "blip" should be "flit".
I like the fact that most of the technical people are in lab coats. Mind you this really was at the forefront of science then and coming only 14 years after the BBC started regular radio transmissions it showed a great leap forward in technology in such a small span of time.
Good point Trevor, I never noticed the lab coats before, though I've watched the clip many times. I love the song, really. I'm from Burbank California, which produces a huge amount of television. Never mind what's on TV, television itself fascinates me, we tend to forget what a marvel it is. I've thought of performing the song, and teaching it in one-verse form, at what the Simpsons calls The Museum of TV and Television in LA. The Anthem of Television -the word was glossy and new in 1936, and it shows.
Happy 75th birthday BBC TV. I just love this song, beautiful Adele Dixon, lovely voice and no hand held microphone obscuring the face,which todays ' artistes ' need.Such is progress !!.
In August 1936 (3 months before the official opening of the Television Service) Elizabeth Cowell presented experimental BBC transmissions from the Alexandra Palace studios to the Radio Exhibition held at Olympia in London.
The high minded promise of Television, often discussed( or sung) but rarely lived up to. While RCA was still sending pictures mostly from one room to another, the BBC( using RCA derived equipment), was starting an actual broadcast service. Immediately seeing military uses for the art, the UK engineers overtly maintained broadcasts while secretly improving the hardware for their actual agenda, that of RADAR. By the time the BBC ceased TV service in 1939, the technology shifted to radar applications which arrived more or less fully developed. In the US, without the UK's sense of urgency ( for now...) TV developed in a less high quality broadcast service. What passed for programming was primitive. The screen resolution was at 441 lines before the wartime hiatus. After December 1941, like the UK, the technology shifted to radar applications. After the war, unlike UK equipment which remained on the same technical standards, prewar US receivers, operating on AM sound, and slightly different reception frequencies were obsoleted when set manufacture resumed. Postwar US sets had FM derived audio, 525 line resolution and operated on different reception frequencies. Anyone who had purchased highly expensive prewar sets now had useless furniture that could not receive any element of broadcasts. Unlike the 2009 switch to digital TV which was facilitated by government mandated conversion boxes for older sets, prewar set owners had no recourse except to line up for 1946 models. Back in the UK, service was resumed in 1946 much along the lines of the 1936-39 service. While in the US, while there were scheduled programs, it would be until 1948 before anything resembling a full broadcast schedule as we now understand it began.
Lovely to see these few films of early TV, my father helped develop the post war system receivers, designing his own and one for publication as a home build set. All based on war time tubes and valves of course. Long forgotten is the real reason TV developed so quickly in the 1930's, it was a cover for the Radar work in the UK, most output of tubes and components was for Radar, with few sets really delivered in the quantities publicised. All the set makers were working on the radar set far more.
I noticed that the audio operator rotated the fader to the left to "open up the valve" to bring up the microphones. I remember hearing this about the UK"s backwards ways of doing things, like driving on the left side of the roadways. The concept they used in their audio world at that time, was that of, when opening a water valve, you rotate the knob counterclockwise to let the signal flow. Later on when sliding faders began to be used, moving the fader down, toward the operator, to raise the level, was their way of configuring their mixing consoles.
Oops. Typos corrected: Magic Rays - BBC Television Song 1936 A mighty blaze of mystic magic rays Is all about us in the blue And in sight and sound they trace Living pictures out of space To bring our new wonder to you The busy world before you is unfurled It calms - It’s tears and laughter too One by one they play their part In this latest of the arts To bring new enchantment to you As by your fireside you sit The news will blip Upon the silver screen And just for entertaining you With something new The stars will then be seen - so There’s joy in store The world is at your door It’s here for everyone to view Conjured up in sound and sight By the magic rays of light That bring Television to you
Note that the camera (at 0:20 and at the end) did NOT have a monitor/viewfinder for the cameraman to see what he was getting! (Oh, and I WANT THAT METER at 1:01 - "gallons per minute". Presumably to do with cooling the transmitting valves.)
@MrElliotpaige I suspect that is indeed the drama he was after; just in case the link doesn't work (it didn't for me, though when I found it, it was that link) - it's called "The Fools On The Hill", with that quirky sense of humour the BBC still allowed about itself in the 1980s. (The hill being the one on which Alexandra Palace, where the transmitter and studios were, stood.)
Thanks for the info making me do my homework. The service started on November 2nd 1936. I'm sure you must have seen the wonderful colour footage of Alexandra Palace & Radio Olympia on You Tube. The Radio Olympia Exhibition is advertised for August & September in this film,is of course the event to which you refer. They seem to have had a studio within the exhibition with Mr Middleton talking about growing Dahlias. I wonder if this was CCTV, or was actually transmitted. Fantastic footage.
@ToyTiger - I also remember that TV programme. As I recall it covered both the Bard and EMI systems. I remember a bit about how the chemicals from the Bard syastem leaked over the dress of the singer. Can't remember the name of the programme though - sorry
I've read that make-up for early TV looked very bizarre in real life. I've also read that the amount of light necessary for early broadcasts was nearly unendurable, it was so extreme and hot. People would faint from it.
The makeup for the Baird system indeed had to be very exaggerated. But even for the electronic system (the one shown here - the song was not broadcast on the Baird system), since it was not colour, colours were used which the cameras picked up better - presumably this remained the case right up to colour, though later even monochrome cameras had improved colour response. Also, remember make-up was more accentuated anyway in those days - look at the queen in both her wedding and coronation, and films of the period and even a bit later - Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany's… TV lighting - as all lighting, other than arc lamps used in cinemas and a few other places - used incandescent bulbs right up to when LEDs became economic in the 21st century (fluorescents gave strobing problems, though were used to some extent). Though early cameras did need more. For the Baird system, sometimes a flying-spot light was used, which gave problems to a few performers with epileptic tendencies.
@@G6JPG Of course there were very few color movies being made in 1936 as well, so film makeup as well as costume and set designs were all geared to black & white as the norm then.
@AndrewJimScott - Television as we know it was not really invented by one person, but it was developed in the UK from the EMI-Marconi electronic system and adopted by the BBC soon after the experimental transmissions of 1936, in preference to the unsatisfactory mechanical system promoted by John Logie Baird.
The Baird system was not quite as unsatisfactory as often presented - and remember every electronic device in a receiver cost real money in those days; I think a fully electronic set cost many times what a "televisor" did.
@@G6JPG Even so, it was fairly clear that the electronic system was the way forward. I was given to understand that the BBC knew this, but were instructed by the government to give equal weighting to the Baird system initially.
Try typing in your search engine: "Here's looking at you" sung by Miss Helen Mc'Kay. Sadly even that piece of Film footage , was edited, so you will never see the original broadcast.
I absolutely know that there was a dramatized British mini-series about the early days of TV in England, it was shown on PBS in 1985 or 86 and I distinctly remember this song being sung in it, but I cannot find any reference to it online. I'm not sure of the name of the show, and I looked through all of the Masterpiece Theater presentations from that year. Does anyone know what this show was?
"The Fools On The Hill" (Ally Pally [Alexandra Palace] was [still is of course] on a hill, making it suitable as a transmitter location). I believe as far as was practicable, they used authentic equipment.
Do you notice that Adele Dixon never makes eye contact with the camera? That would soon change when there were more people watching at home than in the studio.
And - who clocked up the most on-screen hours? Carole Hersee - the engineer's daughter in test card F. (I don't know if her record still stands, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't - will probably never be broken now, since test cards are rarely shown these days; it'd have to be someone whose picture is on the wall/fixture of the studio of a much-used programme, like the news, and they change their sets quite frequently now, for some reason.)
No realmente; BBC estaba transmitiendo desde 1929 con el sistema electromecánico de Logie Baird de 30 líneas , para 1935 Baird mejoró a 250 líneas, aparte de otros competitivos sistemas, y como televisión comenzó a ganar popularidad, fue decidido que BBC Televisión tuviera su casa definitiva en el Palacio Alexandria. El 2 de Noviembre de 1936 fue la primera transmisión de su nueva casa y emitiendo en 250 líneas (sistema Baird) y el Nuevo mejorado 405 líneas del EMI-Marconi.
Well, only those within the range of the transmitter - which was basically London and not far outside - and with a lot of money; a full electronic set cost about the same as a car, I think. (And not too many had a car then either!)
Styles change. Especially singing styles. (Listen to some of the "great" singers from the early days of sound recording - Clara Butt, early Caruso, Florrie Ford, …)
There's something I really like about the line 'Living pictures out of space'. It seems to capture the wonder for the technology at the time.
Same
Definetly
The song was specially-commissioned, actually called "Television" (or "Bringing Television to You"). The orchestra was the BBC Television Orchestra and the conductor was Hyam Greenbaum.
Who actually created the song?
@@G6JPG The lyrics were by James Dyrenforth and the music by Kenneth Leslie-Smith.
Does anyone know the name of the British newsreel that included this song? It covered more info from that first broadcast. Saw it on PBS about 30 years ago.
Adele Dixon,what a wonderful facinating looking lady she was ( I'm in love ) A lot of people would find this piece of television history a little twee , but I don't , the song that she sings so beautifully,has a wonderful haunting quality to it and she is simply magical,especially her eyes. If they knew then what a world giant television was to become from such humble beginings,I think it would have probably frightened them all at Aly Paly, that is quiet a legacy.As a broadcaster I salute them !
The audio-quality is quite poor, so here is the lyric.
A mighty blaze of mystic magic rays
Is all about us in the blue
And in sight and sound they trace
Living pictures out of space
To bring our new wonder to you
The busy world before you is unfurled
It calms - It’s tears and laughter to
One by one they play their part
In this latest of the arts
To bring new enchantment to you
As by your fireside you sit
The news will blip
Upon on the silver screen
And just for entertaining you
With something new
The stars will then be seen - so
There’s joy in store
The world is at your door
It’s here for everyone to view
Conjured up in sound and sight
By the magic rays of light
That bring Television to you
Thanks very much for posting this. Great lyrics.
Corrections: "blaze" shuld be "maze", "It calms - it's tears and laughter to" should be "Its sounds, its tears and laughter too", "blip" should be "flit".
Actually there's more errors - the correct words are here: www.flickr.com/photos/stevejm2009/6305183075
I like the fact that most of the technical people are in lab coats. Mind you this really was at the forefront of science then and coming only 14 years after the BBC started regular radio transmissions it showed a great leap forward in technology in such a small span of time.
Good point Trevor, I never noticed the lab coats before, though I've watched the clip many times. I love the song, really. I'm from Burbank California, which produces a huge amount of television. Never mind what's on TV, television itself fascinates me, we tend to forget what a marvel it is. I've thought of performing the song, and teaching it in one-verse form, at what the Simpsons calls The Museum of TV and Television in LA. The Anthem of Television -the word was glossy and new in 1936, and it shows.
Note the camera crew and studio technicians wearing lab coats. Pioneering days they were. Fabulous.
Happy 75th birthday BBC TV. I just love this song, beautiful Adele Dixon, lovely voice and no hand held microphone obscuring the face,which todays ' artistes ' need.Such is progress !!.
Happy 85th Birthday BBC TV.
In August 1936 (3 months before the official opening of the Television Service) Elizabeth Cowell presented experimental BBC transmissions from the Alexandra Palace studios to the Radio Exhibition held at Olympia in London.
How good it is to hear some REAL music....how any one can prefer modern pop to this type of tuneful music is beyond me...
The high minded promise of Television, often discussed( or sung) but rarely lived up to.
While RCA was still sending pictures mostly from one room to another, the BBC( using RCA derived equipment), was starting an actual broadcast service.
Immediately seeing military uses for the art, the UK engineers overtly maintained broadcasts while secretly improving the hardware for their actual agenda, that of RADAR.
By the time the BBC ceased TV service in 1939, the technology shifted to radar applications which arrived more or less fully developed.
In the US, without the UK's sense of urgency ( for now...) TV developed in a less high quality broadcast service.
What passed for programming was primitive. The screen resolution was at 441 lines before the wartime hiatus. After December 1941, like the UK, the technology shifted to radar applications.
After the war, unlike UK equipment which remained on the same technical standards, prewar US receivers, operating on AM sound, and slightly different reception frequencies were obsoleted when set manufacture resumed.
Postwar US sets had FM derived audio, 525 line resolution and operated on different reception frequencies.
Anyone who had purchased highly expensive prewar sets now had useless furniture that could not receive any element of broadcasts.
Unlike the 2009 switch to digital TV which was facilitated by government mandated conversion boxes for older sets, prewar set owners had no recourse except to line up for 1946 models.
Back in the UK, service was resumed in 1946 much along the lines of the 1936-39 service.
While in the US, while there were scheduled programs, it would be until 1948 before anything resembling a full broadcast schedule as we now understand it began.
It's not every day a song sung beautifully can bring tears to this grizzled, jaded old man's eyes, but here we are.
Heart achingly beautiful - both the singer and the song!
I love song lyrics, very Metropolis Future style. - and such a wonderful start up. -
Wonderful...watching and listening to this archive gem from the past really moves me!
Lovely to see these few films of early TV, my father helped develop the post war system receivers, designing his own and one for publication as a home build set. All based on war time tubes and valves of course. Long forgotten is the real reason TV developed so quickly in the 1930's, it was a cover for the Radar work in the UK, most output of tubes and components was for Radar, with few sets really delivered in the quantities publicised. All the set makers were working on the radar set far more.
This is the first ever TV broadcast in 1936.
I love it. Three operators for one camera. Today they're all replaced by robotics in the studio. The lab coats are a nice touch too.
I noticed that the audio operator rotated the fader to the left to "open up the valve" to bring up the microphones. I remember hearing this about the UK"s backwards ways of doing things, like driving on the left side of the roadways. The concept they used in their audio world at that time, was that of, when opening a water valve, you rotate the knob counterclockwise to let the signal flow. Later on when sliding faders began to be used, moving the fader down, toward the operator, to raise the level, was their way of configuring their mixing consoles.
0:12 Beautiful song about candletorches with fire
Happy birthday BBC. 100 years of world TV.
What a wonderful piece of tv history thank you for posting this historic clip.
Oops. Typos corrected:
Magic Rays - BBC Television Song 1936
A mighty blaze of mystic magic rays
Is all about us in the blue
And in sight and sound they trace
Living pictures out of space
To bring our new wonder to you
The busy world before you is unfurled
It calms - It’s tears and laughter too
One by one they play their part
In this latest of the arts
To bring new enchantment to you
As by your fireside you sit
The news will blip
Upon the silver screen
And just for entertaining you
With something new
The stars will then be seen - so
There’s joy in store
The world is at your door
It’s here for everyone to view
Conjured up in sound and sight
By the magic rays of light
That bring Television to you
Note that the camera (at 0:20 and at the end) did NOT have a monitor/viewfinder for the cameraman to see what he was getting!
(Oh, and I WANT THAT METER at 1:01 - "gallons per minute". Presumably to do with cooling the transmitting valves.)
@MrElliotpaige
I suspect that is indeed the drama he was after; just in case the link doesn't work (it didn't for me, though when I found it, it was that link) - it's called "The Fools On The Hill", with that quirky sense of humour the BBC still allowed about itself in the 1980s. (The hill being the one on which Alexandra Palace, where the transmitter and studios were, stood.)
Happy 75th Birthday, BBCtv!
Thanks for sharing!
all terribly polite
good to see full version....
Thanks for the info making me do my homework. The service started on November 2nd 1936. I'm sure you must have seen the wonderful colour footage of Alexandra Palace & Radio Olympia on You Tube. The Radio Olympia Exhibition is advertised for August & September in this film,is of course the event to which you refer. They seem to have had a studio within the exhibition with Mr Middleton talking about growing Dahlias. I wonder if this was CCTV, or was actually transmitted. Fantastic footage.
@ToyTiger - I also remember that TV programme. As I recall it covered both the Bard and EMI systems. I remember a bit about how the chemicals from the Bard syastem leaked over the dress of the singer. Can't remember the name of the programme though - sorry
Grand Illusions anyone?
Me!
You rang?
now i see! :)
yup!
DarthKen yes
I've read that make-up for early TV looked very bizarre in real life.
I've also read that the amount of light necessary for early broadcasts was nearly unendurable, it was so extreme and hot. People would faint from it.
The makeup for the Baird system indeed had to be very exaggerated. But even for the electronic system (the one shown here - the song was not broadcast on the Baird system), since it was not colour, colours were used which the cameras picked up better - presumably this remained the case right up to colour, though later even monochrome cameras had improved colour response.
Also, remember make-up was more accentuated anyway in those days - look at the queen in both her wedding and coronation, and films of the period and even a bit later - Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany's…
TV lighting - as all lighting, other than arc lamps used in cinemas and a few other places - used incandescent bulbs right up to when LEDs became economic in the 21st century (fluorescents gave strobing problems, though were used to some extent). Though early cameras did need more.
For the Baird system, sometimes a flying-spot light was used, which gave problems to a few performers with epileptic tendencies.
@@G6JPG Of course there were very few color movies being made in 1936 as well, so film makeup as well as costume and set designs were all geared to black & white as the norm then.
Thank you Jurek for sharing this very special video with me !
You are a REAL Friend ...
@AndrewJimScott - Television as we know it was not really invented by one person, but it was developed in the UK from the EMI-Marconi electronic system and adopted by the BBC soon after the experimental transmissions of 1936, in preference to the unsatisfactory mechanical system promoted by John Logie Baird.
The Baird system was not quite as unsatisfactory as often presented - and remember every electronic device in a receiver cost real money in those days; I think a fully electronic set cost many times what a "televisor" did.
@@G6JPG Even so, it was fairly clear that the electronic system was the way forward. I was given to understand that the BBC knew this, but were instructed by the government to give equal weighting to the Baird system initially.
Try typing in your search engine: "Here's looking at you" sung by Miss Helen Mc'Kay.
Sadly even that piece of Film footage , was edited, so you will never see the original broadcast.
How delightful! Thank you for sharing.
1936 a tv só chegou ao brazil em 1951e só popularizou u em 1966 quando o ... Silvio Santos fundou sua fábrica de tv ....STRAWS....
BBC television! Happy 75th birthday today 2/11/2011 ,
I think you'll find the words are: "A mighty maze of mystic magic rays is all about us in the BLUE" . . .
:-)
Good song that!
The Secret Life of Machines - VCR part 2 shows the early developments of 2 inch Quad including some of the early Ampex recordings.
The orchestral into always sets me off - the overloaded bass at about 0:13-0:15. All very nostalgic.
Many thanks for that.... I will try searching there. Cheers !!!!
I absolutely know that there was a dramatized British mini-series about the early days of TV in England, it was shown on PBS in 1985 or 86 and I distinctly remember this song being sung in it, but I cannot find any reference to it online. I'm not sure of the name of the show, and I looked through all of the Masterpiece Theater presentations from that year. Does anyone know what this show was?
"The Fools On The Hill" (Ally Pally [Alexandra Palace] was [still is of course] on a hill, making it suitable as a transmitter location).
I believe as far as was practicable, they used authentic equipment.
The Emitron cameras were surprisingly compact.
Do you notice that Adele Dixon never makes eye contact with the camera? That would soon change when there were more people watching at home than in the studio.
Interesting point; no, I hadn't noticed. Note also the camera had no monitor (viewfinder) - observe the cameraman peering round it.
I really missed 2010
Adele Dixon - wonderful! But who was the first woman on BBC television?
And - who clocked up the most on-screen hours?
Carole Hersee - the engineer's daughter in test card F. (I don't know if her record still stands, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't - will probably never be broken now, since test cards are rarely shown these days; it'd have to be someone whose picture is on the wall/fixture of the studio of a much-used programme, like the news, and they change their sets quite frequently now, for some reason.)
so you want me to open the television.. sorry, Zyra i am not a technician.
So they rolled their Rs in those days
Look at the mess of everything now.
That's a BBC 1
Yes
Don't forget Lost and the Simpsons = )
@zoltepp09 yes heres to more 3os tv stuff without nazis.
esta es la primera transmisión?
No realmente; BBC estaba transmitiendo desde 1929 con el sistema electromecánico de Logie Baird de 30 líneas , para 1935 Baird mejoró a 250 líneas, aparte de otros competitivos sistemas, y como televisión comenzó a ganar popularidad, fue decidido que BBC Televisión tuviera su casa definitiva en el Palacio Alexandria. El 2 de Noviembre de 1936 fue la primera transmisión de su nueva casa y emitiendo en 250 líneas (sistema Baird) y el Nuevo mejorado 405 líneas del EMI-Marconi.
Jasmine Bligh?
She was a descendant of Captain Bligh of the 'Bounty' mutiny.
We went from enchantment to Jerry Springer.
Who is the singer ?
@Mr Vintgage Restorer Adele Dixon.
Wonder who had a TV?
Well, only those within the range of the transmitter - which was basically London and not far outside - and with a lot of money; a full electronic set cost about the same as a car, I think. (And not too many had a car then either!)
Hi,I am 12 years old and what is this?
trollface
Er, so Scotland isn't a part of Great Britain? Oh dear!
Barely nowadays, it would seem!
She's good but George Formby would have been better
😄A hideous dress, awful lyrics, and terrible singing. Yuck.
Styles change. Especially singing styles. (Listen to some of the "great" singers from the early days of sound recording - Clara Butt, early Caruso, Florrie Ford, …)