Linking the Regions in the Olden Days

[tvmercia]

in an age where there is fibre from just about anywhere to just about anywhere, i still find it fascinating how things worked in the early days. i have a copy of a film from the very start of tv broadcasting from bbc midlands in 1949, which explains a little about how the network was expanded to birmingham.

the sutton coldfield transmitting station was designed, built and operated by the bbc, whilst the gpo were responsible for linking the midlands to london. both cable and radio were used. the cable route went:
alexandra palace - museum exchange - watford - berkhamstead - tring - aylesbury - towcester - coventry - birmingham exchange - sutton coldfield

and the cable had the following capacity ...
- two television coaxial tubes
- 15 television control circuits
- eight sound broadcasting units
- 18 telephone control circuits
- four telephone coaxial tubes capable of 1,200 simultaneous calls

but my question is, how on earth did they manage to get a decent quality picture along such a length of cable? obviously there must have been booster equipment in the exchanges, but surely in 1949 this must have been primitive stuff. and when they say 'radio', do they mean they transmitted on non-public uhf channels, or was there a primitive version of microwave?

[Steve in Pudsey]

In the early days, when it was 405 b/w, they managed to squeeze TV outside broadcasts down normal phone lines!

[Steve in Pudsey]

Seems that yes, it was microwave that was used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Te ... ve_network