On 26 January 1926, the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated his experimental television equipment to members of the Royal Institution at his laboratory in Long Acre, central London. Ten years later, on 2 November 1936, the world's first regular high-definition television service was launched from the BBC studios at Alexandra Palace in north London, and ten years after that, on 7 June 1946, the service resumed, having been closed down for the duration of the Second World War. By the time the next decade had passed, the BBC's monopoly on television broadcasting had been broken by the advertising-funded public service broadcaster, Independent Television (ITV), heralding the beginning of the dominance of television as mass communication medium. In the space of forty years, television developed from a laboratory-based experiment to a medium of information, education and entertainment.

The origins of this book can be traced back to a research visit to the BBC's Written Archives Centre in Caversham in 2006. Having completed research on another book, I had some time to spare and so happened to come across BBC files relating to the Baird Television Company. Although I was familiar with John Logie Baird, I was not, at that point, aware of the full extent of the BBC's involvement with the introduction and development of a television service in the 1920s and 1930s. Further research opened up a fascinating set of debates around politics, technol-ogy, public service, commerce and business – and strong personalities. It also highlighted tensions between the government, the broadcaster (the BBC) and the fledgling radio and television manufacturing industry. Furthermore, the research led me to a discourse around early perceptions of the potential uses of television and, more importantly perhaps, made me reconsider the widely-circulated narrative that John Reith, the British Broadcasting Company's Managing Director and then the British Broadcasting Corporation's first Director-General, despised television and would have nothing to do with it. I also encountered a discourse around national identity and ‘Britishness’ which emerged at various points in the narrative history. This book will address these issues through a detailed chronology and historical narrative based not only on revisiting some of the major secondary sources but also on original archival work.