On November 2, 1936, the BBC switched on the world's first regular high-definition television service, broadcasting from Alexandra Palace, a building on a hill in north London. A few hundred sets could receive the pictures, but the schedule was real.
Few sets existed. Two systems fought for the slot. The BBC ran mechanical and electronic cameras side by side at first, then chose the electronic method that became the basis of the medium.
The screen was small. The step was large.
The service reached viewers with news, sport, and staged plays, and it kept running through the early years of the war until the bombing of London forced a pause in 1939, after which the BBC rebuilt the trade and returned television to British homes in 1946 with the same Alexandra Palace transmitter that had started it all.
Television had been shown before, by inventors in several countries, but no one had offered a daily program to the public on a fixed schedule. That is what changed on this date, and the habit of watching at a set time began here.
The early sets cost more than many families earned in a week, so the first audience was small and gathered in shops and bars rather than living rooms. Still, the schedule created a new kind of public, one that watched the same thing at the same hour across a city.