First years
The government operated the sole television channel in France for 28 years. It was created as Radiovision-PTT on 26 April 1935, making it among the oldest television stations in the world, and one of the very few prewar television stations to remain in existence to the present day.
The first public demonstration of a 30-line mechanical television took place on 14 April 1931. The image rendering was an improvement upon Baird's thanks to the development of the "moving light point" system and the use of a camera with Weiller mirror drums by the engineer René Barthélemy, head of the radio laboratory of the Compagnie des compteurs (CdC) of Montrouge. In charge of French broadcasting, the PTT administration carried out some rudimentary television experiments from December 1931 by broadcasting experimental 30 to 45 minute broadcasts at variable times from Monday to Saturday with Baird equipment from the medium wave transmitter of Radio PTT. The Barthélemy system was officially adopted in preference to that of Baird, due to the greater stability of the images, for the continuation of experimental transmissions in 1932.
The Minister of the PTT, Henri Queuille, then authorised the Compagnie des compteurs to continue its experiments using the PTT superior school transmitter located at 103 rue de Grenelle in the 15th arrondissement of Paris and assigned the company a rudimentary studio at number 93 of the same street. Barthélemy continued his experiments there with a new disc camera from Nipkow which offered much better shooting possibilities than with the previous system. The programs were broadcast in 30 lines on Tuesday and Friday at 5:00 pm by two transmitters, the images by the medium wave transmitter of the higher school of the PTT on the wavelength of 431 meters and the sound by the transmitter of the Compagnie des compteurs in Montrouge connected to the studio by a telephone line. These experimental broadcasts only reached a very limited public of amateurs of technical innovation who tinkered with receivers connected to a radio, thus constituting a radiovision receiver.
At the same time, the BBC Television Service had been broadcasting an experimental but regular television service since 22 August 1932, with broadcasts taking place Monday to Friday from 11.00 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., and at night on medium wave on 205 meters after BBC radio programmes closed down for the night. The new French Minister of the PTT of the Flandin Government, Georges Mandel, during a visit to the general manager of the British Broadcasting Corporation at the end of 1934, attended a live broadcast of the Epsom Derby on a televisor built by John Logie Baird.
Convinced by this demonstration and of the interest of this invention for the future, but also very aware that the ministerial instability must lead him to quickly imprint his mark on the heavy administration of the PTT for which he was responsible by modernizing, Georges Mandel decided to inaugurate as soon as possible a regular and experimental public television service in France. In March 1935, he went to the Compagnie des compteurs to measure the state of progress of the research. René Barthélemy gave him a demonstration of his new mechanical disc camera with 60 lines of definition (25 images per second), his new telecine (of which he was the inventor) with 180 lines, as well as a receiver with 60 cathode ray tube lines; a tube for which the Compagnie des compteurs has just launched production. He also informed him of his ongoing work on a 180-line camera.
Pressed to carry out his project, the minister granted Barthélemy the means requested for his success. The amphitheater of the PTT superior school, located in the premises of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications at 103 rue de Grenelle, was converted into a television studio on 17 April 1935 and its bleachers were dismantled to enlarge it. The CdC's 60-line mechanical camera was placed in the adjoining room, behind double-thick insulating glass to mask the sound of the motor spinning the camera disk. This same room also housed the 60-line, 500-watt transmitter designed by the Compagnie des compteurs. The project provided for a short wave transmitter on the Eiffel Tower and a definition of 180 lines in the long term, as soon as Barthélemy had finalized his work.
One thousand guests of the Minister, personalities, journalists and industrialists flocked to the studio at 103 rue de Grenelle on Friday, 26 April 1935 to attend the first official regular French television broadcast transmitted by radio with a definition of 60 lines3. At 8:15 pm, on the small greenish screen appeared the face of the actress and friend of the minister, Béatrice Bretty, member of the Comédie-Française, with at her side, Jean Toscane, the most famous voice of Radio PTT, and René Barthélemy. Lips and eyes made up in black for the needs of television broadcasting, Miss Bretty recounted of her last tour in Italy with the troupe: "We had a great trip...". These were the first words broadcast on French television. This first television program was broadcast live until 8:30pm on the 175-meter medium-wave frequency within a radius of 100 km (60 miles). Radiovision-PTT, the first French television channel, had just been born.
Radiovision-PTT began operations on 26 April 1935 as the first television station in France, using a 30-line mechanical television system based on the Nipkow disk. It was operated by the French PTT agency with a transmitter located atop the Eiffel Tower, and was on air three days a week from 11 am to 11:30 am and 8 pm to 8:30 pm and on Sundays from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. On 4 January 1937, the broadcasting hours were changed such that television programmes were aired from 5 pm until 10 pm on Wednesdays to Fridays, and from 4 pm to 8:30 pm or 9 pm on Saturdays to Tuesdays.
Impressed by the sharpness of the 60-line images obtained from the cathode-ray tube control receiver during this broadcast, Georges Mandel gave the PTT technicians and René Barthélemy six months to set up the necessary installations for regular public broadcasting in 180 lines. Two months late, the official inauguration of 180-line television took place on Sunday, 8 December 1935, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm in front of the press, at the Radiovision-PTT studio at 103, rue de Grenelle in Paris, with a gala session combining excerpts from plays, comic operas, poems, songs and sketches performed by many famous comedians and music-hall artists invited by Béatrice Bretty, and whose numbers were announced at the screen by Suzy Wincker, the first official continuity announcer, on the air since June.
The rue de Grenelle studio required 50,000 lux of light to compensate for the insufficient sensitivity of the 180-line mechanical camera with a double-spiral Nipkow disk rotating at 50 rotations per second. The dissipation of the heat of this very violent lighting was annoying and even dangerous for the artists. This is why a forced-air refrigeration system (temperature and humidity) was installed in the studio to lower its temperature from 55 to 25 °C (130°F to 75°F) by means of six aerators. The images filmed in the studio were routed live by a 2,500 meter (1½ mile) long telephone cable to a new transmitter designed by SFR-CSF and temporarily located at the north pillar of the Eiffel Tower, from where a feeder connected it to the four 2 kW shortwave transmitting antennas located at the top of the tower 320 meters (1050 feet) high and which can be received 100 km (60 miles) around Paris. The sound was transmitted in medium wave on the frequency of 206 meters (675 feet) by the transmitter of Radio Tour Eiffel.
The very large public crowds in front of the receivers installed at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers at 292 rue Saint-Martin, at the National Tourist Office on the Champs-Élysées, at the Salon de la France d'Outre-Mer at the Grand Palais, at the Maison de la Chimie, and at the town hall of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, which simultaneously broadcast the images in 180 lines. Indeed, if Barthélemy's Emyvisor from EMYRADIO was put on sale at the end of 1935, its price was still exorbitant (8,000 to 10,000 francs at the time, or around 6,000 euros today) and only the privileged few could enjoy television at the time.
Robert Jardillier, new PTT Minister of the Popular Front, launched on 24 October 1936 a call for tenders from radio-electric manufacturers in order to provide television with higher definition equipment exploiting the possibilities offered by the iconoscope and electronic television. Already exploited by the British, Germans and Americans. A test period would enable the best standard to be chosen.
The broadcasts became regular from 4 January 1937 with broadcast from 11am to 11:30am and from 8pm to 8:30pm on weekdays and from 5:30pm to 7:30pm on Sundays. The Deputy Secretary General for Broadcasts, Wladimir Porché, brought the greatest French artists, such as Sacha Guitry, Serge Lifar and Maurice Chevalier, to the cameras of the Radiovision-PTT studio. At that time, there were only about 100 individual television receivers.
Grammont Radio-Télévision carried out its tests in 441 lines, the Compagnie française de télévision (association of the Compagnie des compteurs and SFR-CSF) in 450 lines and Thomson-Houston in 455 lines. The PTT administration chose the 455-line high-definition equipment manufactured by Thomson for public demonstrations at the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, which was then transferred to the Radiovision-PTT studio for testing.
