Coronation on TV

[ppppenguin]

The attached photo is of a Marconi Mk II TV camera that was used 70 years ago at the Coronation of the late Queen Elizabeth. We display it prominently at the Broadcast Engineering Museum www.becg.tv

What's less well known is that a small part of the 1937 Coronation was televised.
https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anni...elizabeth/

The BECG and Broadcast Engineering Museum now have a Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_...tion_Group

[Mike Watterson]

And on a 9″ screen, the 377 lines was High Definition.

[ppppenguin]

The camera was found on a scrapheap and needed extensive cosmetic restoration. It could be made to work but that would be another big restoration project. Apart from the different camera cable connectors, a Mk II camera will work with a Mk III camera control unit. We have several restored Mk III CCUs. The main HT power supply for a Mk II/III CCU is a rather scary 250V at 1A. Yes ONE AMP. It's fully stabilised too. A lot of rectifiers and series pass triodes (5Y4 and 6080 if I remember correctly) packed into a rather small space with a fan to stop things melting.

The camera was exhibited at the BBC's New Broadcasting House in 2013 when it was opened by our late Queen. Our chairman, Paul Marshall, was privileged to be introduced to Her Majesty. It went on to be shown for 6 weeks at Buckingham Palace as part of the 60th anniversary of the 1953 Coronation. We weren't supposed to take pictures there but Paul did. If he publishes them he'd probably be dragged to the Tower in chains.