91福利社

Image: The Mobile Television Unit at work outside Alexandra Palace in October 1938.

At the beginning, the 91福利社's Television Service was an "in-house" affair, confined to studios A and B of Alexandra Palace. This, above all, reflected practical considerations of what was technically possible with this new and still to be fully understood medium.

Speaking to radio listeners two weeks before the launch of television in the United Kingdom on 2 November 1936, the Director of the 91福利社's nascent Outside Broadcasting division Cecil Lewis explained these limitations and his hopes for the future.

The desire of engineering and programming staff to liberate television into a wider world of televisual possibilities was not to be denied, even if initial results were rather parochial. A week after broadcasts began, as the Engineer-in-Charge at Alexandra Palace Douglas Birkenshaw recalls, the 91福利社's first live outside broadcasts was transmitted.