Figures show 110 people in Huddersfield still watch black and white televisions

Nov 16 2009 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

BBC1’s first colour programme was a Petula Clark concert from the Royal Albert Hall while ITV ushered in the brave new world with a five-minute traffic report. The first colour commercial was for Bird’s Eye Peas.

There were 200,000 colour TVs in 1969. Colour televisions did not outnumber black and white sets until 1976.

Ian Lavender, Pike of comedy series Dad’s Army, recalls the early days of colour TV.

He said: “I remember we bought our first colour television set to watch the third series of Dad’s Army which had been recorded in colour.

“I was also the first actor to be killed by a colour TV set on colour TV in Z Cars when a robbery went wrong and the TV set was dropped on me from a great height by Nicholas Jones.”

Colour TV was first demonstrated way back in 1928 by John Logie Baird, the inventor of television. He showed a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science a short film of a basket of strawberries.

His grandson Iain Logie Baird, curator of television at the National Media Museum in Bradford, said: “The arrival of mass colour television was a technological breakthrough.”

The addition of colour enabled viewers to have a greater feeling of actually ‘being there’.”

Do you still just watch a black and white TV? If so, call our newsdesk on 01484 437712.