Television

Press, Volume C, Issue 29468, 21 March 1961, Page 3

Television

Sir, —In your reports of Mr John Watson’s talk about the effects of television on family life it is stated that “television . . . began later in Britain than in America” and “it first became a mass medium of entertainment in the United States.” These statements are incorrect. Television is a British invention, and the world’s first public television service was inaugurated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in November, 1936. Although experimental transmissions began in New York nearly five years later, television receivers and services were not •available to the public in America until 1946, 10 years after the British Broadcasting Corporation began a television service “to disseminate information, education, and entertainment” on a nationwide srale in Great Britain. In 195 b, there were only 3,700.000 television sets in use in America compared witn 5.500.000 in Great Britain. Television was therefore well established in the United Kingdom long before it was used for these purposes in the United States.—Yours, etc., F.C. March 18, 1961.