Projection Television in the 1950's ?

[Melvin England]

I am currently very slowly making my way through a very interesting, very large and very thick book which you may be familiar with. It is The Beatles Anthology. A fascinating read.

However, on the top of page 29 there is a photograph from a newspaper dated 4th May 1957 and the caption underneath says: "Intense excitement is shown above by the clenched fist of George Harrison and Jim Kelly, who were watching the Cup Final on the projection television in the Speke Congregational Church Hall on Saturday last."

I was not aware that there were any types of TV projection systems in the 1950's. Obviously black and white using the old 405 line system I assume?
Can anyone shed any light on any equipment that was around in those days for large screen projection as this is certainly the first time I have come across it.

[Leonard Goss]

I thought the Beatles were active from around 1960, so maybe a typo and should have been 1967 not 1957?

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

Yes, there were video projectors in the late 1950’s. The BBC developed one in England, and there were several models here in the USA. All of them were intended for theatre use, not consumer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecinema

[Kenneth Horan]

Video projectors are not new. The Eidophor television projector dates from 1940-43.

[Martin Davey]

I used to visit the MOMI museum at Waterloo often during the 1990's. On the way to the museums cinema/ NFT 3 was a 1950s (I believe) video projection machine.

[Brian Fretwell]

Didn't Baird even have an early rotating mirror TV projector in the 1930's? I seem to recall him demonstrating a outside broadcast of a horse race to a cinema.

[Melvin England]

Thank you everybody for your contributions, particularly Mitchell for those links. It now seems strange that this system took so long to catch on, as it only seems to be relatively recently that cinemas have started using live projection as a Unique Selling Point.

Leonard - The photograph was pre-Beatles and was indeed 1957. Just one of those coincidences where a newspaper takes a random photograph of a group of people before one of them goes on to much greater things.

[Dominique De Bast]

Some informations about that here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-BvMcqEc98

[John Burgess]

Hi , just joined the forum. Back in the fifties my parents had a projection TV, not on such a large scale as posted. It was a large wooden cabinet with a matte looking screen below which was the speaker , the cathode ray tube was mounted pointing to the rear of the cabinet onto a mirror which in turn projected onto the screen. The first night we viewed the TV it caught fire , my Dad quickly put it out and the engineer was called out the next day. Those were the days .

[Paul Adsett]

Anyone remember the 9 ins TV'S with a huge magnifying glass strapped on the front! As primitive as it was, the enchantment and excitement of those early TV's and the grainy, sometimes distorted pictures from the BBC was really something.

[Brian Fretwell]

I certainly remember seeing one of the magnifying glasses (possibly in a museum) with a note saying that it was hollow and filled with glycerine. I also remember a presentation, before LCD projectors, that had a device mounted on the front of a 14" Sony Trinitron set.

[Martin Jones]

1951.... South Bank, London, England.....Festival of Britain. Many thousands visited the "Telekinema", an experimental cinema showcasing Stereoscopic films, Stereophonic sound and live projection of the scenes in the foyer on the theatre screen using a TV camera and Video projector.
I was there.... 14 years old and absolutely blown away!!!!!!
1953....Coronation Year and watched on a 9 inch TV with magnifier.
Same year......16 years old and took over the projector half way through a screening of the Amateur Cine World Ten Best films in Thornton Heath because the operator wasn't familiar with the B&H 601 he was using which kept losing sound drum tension. Was rewarded with a private tour of the projection facilities at the Odeon, Leicester Square (the premier cinema in the UK)...... and it had a Cintel TV projector for showing important national broadcasts from our ONLY TV channel.....BBC
There's no wonder REAL cinema has held a fascination fr me sinc I was 10 years old.....83 next month.

[Martin Jones]

Martin Davey (earlier in this thread) refers to seeing a 1950s video projector at the MOMI at Waterloo. THe Telekinema was handed over to the BF! after the Festival and was renamed the Natiomal Film Theatre (NFI). It stayed under Waterloo Bridge for a while and was later relocated. It's a fair guess that his and mine are one and the same.......and it's probably still there now?

[Ken Finch]

I visited the "Telekinema" at the "Festival of Britain" exhibition on the South Bank, London, as mentioned by Martin, and watched projected television and 3D presentations. Also remember those tiny 9 inch tvs and magnifier attachments. As a child during the war I visited a relative who worked at HMV at Hayes and he had what I thought was a Radiogram but it also contained a TV. The screen being viewed via a mirror on the inside of the lid. It was not working of course because transmissions ceased with the screening of a Mickey Mouse cartoon at the outbreak of the war and was not resumed until well afterwards, opening with the same cartoon. In those days there was only one channel, BBC. and available only in the London area, transmitted from Alexandra Palace. Ken Finch.