William Beaton

If a flow‐chart were to be prepared of the development of local education authority television in Britain, as convenient a starting point as any would be circa 1960. It was then that, coincident with an influx of ETV ideas from America, manufacturers of television equipment began staging national exhibitions and local demonstrations of CCTV hardware. The aim in most instances was to show how, with relatively cheap cameras and ancillary apparatus, a lesson or lecture could be relayed by cable from one part of a building to another. The exhibitions and demonstrations were invariably successful and made their point. But it soon became apparent that, acceptable though the equipment might be for individual school or college purposes, it contributed little towards the solution of the educational problems facing local authorities. As far as they were concerned, what was required was (a) development in the direction of closed‐area television, implying a distribution network linking a central studio to a complete schools system, and (b) equipment of a much higher quality and wider range.