# BBC Television received in New York - November 1938

The four-minute compilation from 1938 exists only because of a technological fluke and the enthusiasm of two television buffs, one in Britain and the other in America where, thanks to freak atmospheric conditions, it was picked up and recorded on a cine camera placed in front of a television screen as the images came in. Andrew Emmerson, the British enthusiast, spent five years tracking down the recording and believes it is the only surviving example of pre-war live high-definition British television. The flickering black-and-white footage includes Jasmine Bligh, one of the original BBC announcers, and a brief shot of Elizabeth Cowell, who also shared announcing duties with Jasmine, an excerpt from an unknown period costume drama and the BBC's station identity transmitted at the beginning and end of the day's output. It was made at a time when no technology existed to record live broadcasts directly. Video tape was not perfected until the late 1950s and "telerecording", the quality copying with a cine camera mounted in front of a television screen was not developed until after the Second World War. There are other recordings from the pre-war era, but they are all cine film shot from a camera alongside the television lens, or as in the case of the Demonstration Films, recreated scenes in a shot in a film studio. The American recording was shown on 26 June 1999 at the refurbished National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford. Mr Emmerson, 50, a freelance…

- Kind: TV
- Runtime: 3 min
- By: Alexandra Palace Television Society
- Genres: History
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/BbcTelevisionReceivedInNewYork-1938)
- Licence or status: [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/BbcTelevisionReceivedInNewYork-1938?play=1)