The first time I saw television

Do you remember the first time you saw television? To us older citizens it’s one of those big moments in life, like remembering where you were and what you were doing when President Kennedy or even Princess Di was killed. It’s fixed there for all time, a moment of wonder, magic and mystery.

I guess in their day both the telephone and the radio had similar impacts. The motor car and aeroplane had the same effect but somehow the television is more a part of our everyday lives, more so than any of those others, except perhaps the telephone. (Does the prefix ‘tele’ have anything to do with that?)

I certainly remember my first, virginal contact with the TV as it very quickly came to be known, (due to our love affair with abbreviations and initials). I must have been about twelve and I was going on one of those adventures that boys frequently indulge in with a couple of like-minded friends. It was at a small radio shop in a suburb of Bristol and it happened at about eight o’clock on a mild winter’s evening, several hours after the gloom of night had descended on the city.

We were just walking along, minding our own business, taking little notice of the darkened shop, until a little way ahead of us, a group of about twenty people were gathered around one particular window. Being typical, nosey little brats, we hurried up to where they were standing and there, at the rear of the window, facing the street, was a television. And it was switched on!

It was about the most wonderful things that we had ever seen. A beautiful mahogany box, about eighteen inches cubed, with an elegant row of knobs across the bottom and there, right in the middle of the front was a moving picture! The picture must have been at least eight inches wide by six inches tall and it was in black and white, just like an old movie. Or perhaps grey and white would be more accurate, because the quality of it wasn’t very good. It was made up of rather blurred horizontal lines and it was dotted with a spattering of dancing white dots, just as if it was snowing. If there was any sound we couldn’t hear it through the glass shop window, but none of that crowd of avid viewers seemed to be concerned about that.

I completely forget what it was we were looking at. It was just the wonder of seeing it for the first time that transfixed us and we must have stood looking at it for at least twenty minutes before we moved on, sated.

When I think of the singing and talking wonders of today, televisions connected to computers or screens that fill a whole wall and colour that dazzles with its beauty and high fidelity sound and vision. I wonder at my excitement all those years ago in a Bristol suburb. It never fails to amaze me how quickly we adjust to new, exciting and sometimes almost frightening experiences, like the progress that has been made since then.

No one in their wildest dreams could have envisaged what was going to happen in the world of electronics. Not just to television sets but all manner of things we now take for granted.

When I first stood, looking at that primitive black and white set in Bristol, my mother did her washing in a boiler with a mangle, even the word computer had been invented yet, let alone the machine and motorways hadn’t arrived in our lives either.

It seems that the more we invent, the faster we invent more. It’s all just like a toilet roll, the nearer we get to the end, the faster it goes!!

Do you recall the first time you saw television? Was your experience similar to Brian’s?