Conference reflections

John Wyver writes: Just over a fortnight since The Cultures of Early Television wrapped, with much – although far from all – of the admin done, and with the distractions of a weekend in Paris and the World Cup now past, I have finally settled down to reflect briefly on the conference. For those of you just joining us, this was a two-day University of Westminster conference about television before the Second World War in Britain, the United States, continental Europe and the Soviet Union. Two events earlier in the year presaged the event: the centenary of the first public demonstration of what John Logie Baird called ‘true television’ on 26 January 1926, and the publication by Bloomsbury/BFI of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of British Television. The conference programme with abstracts and speaker biographies, as well as a further reading list, can be downloaded here. In broad terms it feels as if it was a success. More 150 people registered and our venue Portland Hall…