Television Demonstration during World War II

Sitting in the Alexandra Palace Television Society are a collection of photographs from the Desmond Campbell collection that depict a television demonstration at Alexandra Palace in the middle of World War II. Yet that is not possible - the BBC Television Service was shut-down on 1st September 1939 for the duration of the war. The majority of engineers went off to war-time work with RADAR and the studios were mothballed, the equipment stored away and all Emitron camera tubes taken for storage. Well that is what the established histories state!
However, it has become clear over the last couple of decades that Alexandra Palace [AP] performed a vital war-time role of countering the Luftwaffe navigational radio beams, dealt with so expertly by Laurie Brettingham in his book "Beam Benders".
Wilfred "Paff" Pafford was a pre-war engineer at AP. He was asked to return to AP in early 1940 to look after the equipment on a "care & maintenance" basis. It was "Paff" that worked closely with the RAF contingent based at AP to re-tune the transmitter.
The vision transmitter at AP was used to counter X-Gerat, yet on the floor above the studios were far from silent & empty.
In August 1943 a Mr Howe (from the BBC Research & Design department) & Mr Fuller were filming the studio scene using a 16mm film camera (mounted on an Emitron camera tripod). The studio scene appears to be Mrs Fuller (the wife) arranging flowers at a table and a Miss Fuller (their daughter) sitting on a chair. As well as photographs of them on the set, there are photographs taken of their image on a television screen. This indicates the studio equipment was "fired-up" and working - and certainly not in a mothballed condition. Sadly there are no photographs which feature a television camera, and it is unknown if there were a single camera or more.
Mary Adams, (pre-war head of make-up and wardrobe) was also present for the demonstration, and Douglas Birkinshaw (pre-war Chief Engineer) was in the studio.
This information has all obtained from the writing on the packet of negatives. This is in Desmond Campbell's own hand-writing and there is no reason to doubt the date or people featured in the photographs. Indeed, all the people in the photographs can be positively identified.
Desmond's son Neil remembers something about his father being called to AP during the war - but can't remember why! He remembers the occasion as his father had to get special dispensation to obtain the petrol to drive from Daventry to AP. Campbell was based at Daventry during the war training new female engineering staff. Birkinshaw as also based at Daventry, but Neil cannot remember if they both shared the journey. Desmond Campbell had a road accident on the way home - another reason why Neil remembers the occasion. Neil remembers some discussion taking place about a demonstration for either The King or Churchill, but is not sure if it was in the middle of the war or at the end. However, it would seem unlikely that a demonstration to individuals such as the King or Prime Minister would involve a flower arranging demonstration, or required the services of the Head of make-up!
"Paff" Pafford and Douglas Birkinshaw are featured in the photograph, one each side of the cartoon (which is one of "Paff's"). I was fortunate enough to meet "Paff" Pafford and asked him about this demonstration. He got extremely upset about seeing the photographs and kept saying "I signed the Official Secrets Act and can't say". He got more and more upset and it was unfair to ask any further. When I was leaving, he tapped the side of his nose and said "we did a lot of secret things during those days"!
And I'm afraid that is all I know about a television demonstration that took place at a time when AP was placed under the jurisdiction of the Air Ministry, and being used for the national defence of this county.
I have one tantalising newspaper reference to the demonstration from a journal called "The Leader" from September 1943, which states: "BBC engineers, temporarily working in various parts of the country, were called to Alexandra Palace the other day, where they staged an important television picture – unseen, of course, by the public”.
There are NO documents at the BBC Written Archive Centre, which again seems rather strange. If BBC engineers were called to AP for an important television demonstration, why is there no documentation by the organisation that employed them to support this? It would have to be organised and approved, yet nothing seems to exist.
If any member of the Airfield Research Group Forum can offer any possible information relating to this I would be most grateful, and thank you for taking the time to read about this intriguing mystery.

In response to some of the post received, initially I did think this might have been a demonstration for the Hankey Committee, which first sat in September 1943, and was required to deliberate the future of post-war television. However, it would appear that no actual demonstration of television was given to the members of the Committee - or at least, not one that was documented. There are many documents relating to this committee, so if a demonstration was given, it is unlikely that it would not be mentioned somewhere!

Secondly, if it were that "secret" why was it reported in "The Leader" in Sept 1943, (which apparently was a bit of a "gossip rag" at the time)?

There was a demonstration given to the Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference in February 1945, which was a major full-blown demonstration, with multiple cameras and an audience comprising of the delegates in Studio B. This demonstration is extremely well documented in the BBC Written Archive Centre and by the photographs we hold in the APTS Archive.

Therefore to have no "official" mention of the Aug 1943 demonstration seems very strange, especially, (as mentioned before), the required BBC personnel were stationed in other parts of the country and required permission to travel to AP. Also the fact that AP was still in the hands of the Air Ministry at this time. It would have been a classified location and therefore access would have been controlled.

If the little girl in the pictures is still around it would be intriguing to know if she remembers anything.

It would , however her name is not documented and without that it would be virtually impossible to try to find her. All I have to go on is that her father was called A.B. Howe - I don't even have a first name for him! I hope to be able to find out a little more information from his BBC career - although from initial research it would appear he worked for the R&D department all his BBC career. The staff lists only list him by his initials, so need to find out if his BBC record is still accessible.

Many thanks for the newspaper references Martin. I found them the day before you posted them on the forum. Whilst they confirm what was known they are scarce in their information (hardly surprising during wartime), especially as the Air Ministry was still renting the transmitters from the BBC at this point and the BBC staff were still working alongside the RAF contingent that was based there.

Despite it being reported in the press there is nothing at the BBC Written Archive Centre - yet this seems extremely strange. If BBC staff were required to attend a demonstration it is odd that no documentation exists to support this. Certainly two members of the BBC staff travelled from Daventry to AP for the demonstration. This demonstration didn't just "happen" - it would have been planned and possibly preliminary visits would have been made to ensure the equipment was in working order.

It would appear the search goes on as to what actually happened at AP in August 1943.

Hello all... Aren't these the same people?

As we have discussed elsewhere Elnora, I don't believe these are the same people as featured in the television demonstration at Alexandra Palace in 1943.
Several people in these photographs have been named and identified and worked for the BBC. As I've asked previously, please let me have more details and I'll see if I can help.