Early Technology Television Collection 1930 - 1945

Michael writes: To the best of my belief:

• The Early Technology TV collection is the largest collection of early televisions in private hands in the world today. There are 26 different televisions, 23 British (including 2 low definition 30 line sets), 3 American TVs and one US television camera with a pre-war iconoscope.

• It is the third or possibly the fourth, largest single collection of unduplicated models from this early period in the world today. The larger collections are all in museums or foundations.

• If it is split up and sold in lots no similar sized collection of pre-war models will ever be formed again - that is my belief. The 1990s was the last chance before all the original pre-war owners died. Today surviving pre-war televisions are rarer than Stradivarius violins and the small number remaining in private hands diminishes each year as museums around the world compete to buy up those few that come on to the market.

I know that the collection as a whole is worth much more than the sum of its parts and it will be offered first for sale as a collection and if it fails to reach the reserve

price, then it will be offered for auction in individual lots.

Early Technology Television Library

To the best of my belief:

The television library is unparalleled anywhere in any library in its breadth and scope. I think it is the only specialist library in this field that is strong in both early British and early US television books and ephemera and also includes very scarce pre-war material from both France and Germany thereby covering all the main countries in the world that were developing or making television in the 1930s. If the collection of prewar televisions is more than its individual TV sets, the library is doubly so and more. Complete, it contains magazines published in the UK and the US from every year from 1926 to about 1960 so it is probably an unduplicated reference source from this fact alone, (see analysis charts below). Once the different magazines are sold off that continuous yearly reference source, including the war years, is lost. On their own as a lot, pre-war television magazines from France, though they may be as rare as hen's teeth, are probably not worth any great fortune, but as a part of the whole library they fill a critical hole. The same could be said of the very scarce prewar German material and the brochures, reports and ephemera on the world's first colour television system developed by CBS in the late 40s and very early 50s. The library contains over a hundred original pre WWII television sales catalogues and dozens of pre war schematics from both the US and the UK and so on. I could give dozens of similar examples.

In the British section of the library there is the largest collection of weekly television schedules known from 1930 - 1932, the beginnings of television broadcasting, when Baird was using the BBC transmitters himself, broadcasting television on 30 lines. This is followed by photocopies of the private diaries of Eustace Robb who took over the running of the Baird low definition transmissions as the BBC's first television producer, from 1932 - 1935 together with sample programme transmission schedules, directions and technical details. Photocopies they may be, but they are pure history, highly critical of the BBC and Reith, information that is not recorded elsewhere. I believe it is extremely doubtful if the originals in private hands will ever see the light of day, goodness knows I tried! From 1935- 1939 there is the extraordinary "Munro archive" described in more detail later. Munro was the only television producer employed by BBC television before the outbreak of WWII. His archive is again unique, I'm sorry there is no other word for it. This material is not duplicated in the BBC archives - I have that on the authority of the late Lord Asa Briggs, who was the "Official Historian of the BBC" and wrote the "Official History of the BBC" in several volumes. He read through the archive at my home. Munro's personal scrapbook (complete with a Christmas card from Eustace Robb and numerous letters and memos with famous autographs) runs from 1926. He was the second person appointed to the staff of the BBC television department in 1935 after the head of the department, Gerald Cock. The archive covers how the opening of the television service on 2 November 1936 was organised, managed and transmitted with the original papers, memos and instructions together with comments written while on air. Through it the increasing sophistication of the production of television from inception through to the outbreak of the war can be observed simply by reading this archive in sequence. Finally if you wish to look the technical side of the Alexandra Palace transmitter, the library contains an early numbered copy of the BBC "Black Book" with all the technical details and schematics in sections, for the different systems that together made up the complete Alexandra Palace transmitter, all sections except the post war introduction are dated in the 1930s. Splitting the library will break this complete chain of unrepeatable research material from 1930 - 1939 into pieces. There are many examples of "chains" I could give but instead I would like to point readers to the web. Any search of on the history of television brings up the website www.tv.history.tv. It is used by schools and collages around the world for media study courses as a "standard text" and by hundreds of thousands of other individuals in over a hundred countries round the world. Most of the site was created using only a fraction of the information contained in the library.

The library will be offered for sale complete in the first instance and if it fails to reach its reserve, it will offered in three lots:

1. All British
2. All US
3. France and Germany

If any of these sections fail to meet their reserves, the library will then be sold off in lots as itemised in the Bonhams sale catalogue.

If that happens its value as a unique research resource will be decimated for ever.

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Printed below is the catalogue index of the Early Technology Television Library. The full contents of each section e.g. each US magazine by name and issue date, can be accessed by clicking on the appropriate category. Only original material is listed (except for the Eustace Robb diaries and programmes), but the library also includes photocopies of relevant additional material that I used in my researches, mainly in the files covering individual television manufacturers in the UK and USA which are included in these lots.

Early Technology library Index

Part 1

Section 1 | UK Television Magazines

Section 2 | UK Television Programmes

Section 3 | UK Mechanical Television Sales Literature, Instructions Etc.

Section 4 | UK Television Sales Literature

Section 5 | UK Television Books

Section 6 | UK Television Instructions, Service Booklets & Schematics

Section 7 | UK Miscellaneous

Section 8 | US Television Magazines

Section 9 | US Television Sales Literature

Section 10 | US Television Books

Section 11 | US Television Instructions, Service Booklets & Schematics

Section 12 | US Colour Television Publications

Section 13 | US - Miscellaneous

Section 14 | US Mechanical Television

Section 15 | French Magazines

Section 16 | French Sales Literature

Section 17 | French TV Books

Section 18 | French Miscellaneous

Section 19 | Germany

Section 20 | Italy

Section 21 | Russia

Section 22 | Japan

Magazine Analysis U.K.

Magazine Analysis U.S.A.