Television, the most immediate and up-to-date of the communications media, has nonetheless reached a ripe old age. This tradition embraces more than seventy years of progress, from the crude experiments of John Logie Baird in 1925, through the pioneering 405-line days at Alexandra Palace just before the Second World War, to the era when television entered most homes in the 1950s and the growing sophistication of the 1960s with the introduction of 625-line colour transmissions. This book explores, without sentimentality, the whole heritage of the black and white era of television. In it you will find receivers from imposing sets built like furniture to the first transistor portables, the story of the development of television broadcasting, and the whole culture of the television generation from the coming of commercials on ITV to today s rediscovery of cult programmes. About the author Andrew Emmerson is a writer and researcher on technological subjects. When he is not writing and broadcasting on the subject of today s high-tech wizardry, he enjoys discovering the history of the inventions which came before this, also restoring and reviving equipment based on these older technologies. Other titles for Shire by this author are: Old Telephones".