Curator Toni Booth digs into our archives to examine early film and television of one of Britain’s most iconic sporting events: the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race.
Our collection includes iconic objects from the history of television and radio, and we explore sound and vision technologies through our galleries and exhibitions.
Placement student Elaine Rhodes, from the University of York, writes about her research into Bradford pirate radio.
To celebrate Record Store Day, we’ve picked our top 5 record-related favourites from our collection—though they might not all be quite what you’d expect!
As well as books and journals, our library is home to self-published zines covering community broadcasting and pirate radio.
Emily Rees discusses how private archives, like the C.O. Stanley Pye Collection, can offer invaluable insights into the history of media in Britain.
80 years ago today, Alexandra Palace became the birthplace of British television as we know it.
Amanda Lynsdale discusses some of what she discovered while cataloguing the extensive BBC Collection, acquired in 2012.
Iain Baird looks back at the launch of BBC2 50 years ago, and explains how Play School accidentally became the first succesfully broadcast show on the new channel.
Iain Baird reveals the technology behind our latest television collection acquisition, and explains why the Scophony television scanner is not to be scoffed at.
In 1931 a revolutionary type of microphone housed in an unusual sideways teardrop-shaped capsule was introduced by the BBC. Its oddly-shaped housing earned it the nickname ‘the bomb’.
Iain Logie Baird takes a look at some of the children’s television puppets we’ve acquired as part of the BBC Collection—from Bill and Ben to The Fimbles.
As TV Licensing announces that there are now fewer than 12,000 black and white TV licensees remaining in Britain, Iain Baird looks back at the decline of black and white.