[KesterLester]

I would be interested to hear from any of you who has access to a Pye television built in 1953 (or earlier, but ideally from 1953) which is still in working order and which is capable of displaying modern day BBC transmissions (presumably using some kind of adapter box you will have made ...).

I am asking because I am a Fellow of Peterhouse, the oldest of the colleges of the University of Cambridge. I have always been told that in 1953 (long before my time!) the Fellows of Peterhouse were given a television by the Pye electronics company so that they could watch the coronation of Elizabeth II when it was broadcast live.

The aural history of the college reports that the Pye television in question was kept until such time as it was no longer in working order, and thereafter it was lost and not replaced. Although undergraduate and graduate students of Peterhouse have probably purchased many televisions over the years, the Fellowship (which on the whole is a little more “traditional”, and aware of the status of the college as the oldest) never purchased another television, having probably decided it would not catch on. Indeed, "the television" is sometimes called "the electric television" in college, partly with tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps because of how strange the Pye may have seemed in comparison to the rotating mechanical television the older Fellows may have seen previously.

The reason I am writing to you is because it would be fun if, for the Coronation of Charles III, the college could have the loan of a television of the same vintage that its Fellows used to watch the Coronation of Elizabeth II, given that it hasn't had any other television in the interim. Perhaps some of us could set it up in our combination room as a sort of 're-enactment' with a modern twist. This is just my personal idea -- it doesn't come with necessarily any wider support within college, but I thought I should ask here first to ascertain whether it's even technically possible.

This morning I have written also to the Museum of Technology in Cambridge and the Pye History Trust, as both hold a lot of Pye equipment. But it's too soon for me to have heard back from either.

Christopher