UK's oldest working telly up for sale

Picture perfect

One of Britain's oldest tellies - set to go under the hammer later this month - is 75 years old and surprisingly still in working order.

When the Marconi Type 702 was made, in 1936, the BBC had only been broadcasting television shows for three weeks, offering just two hours of programming a day on one channel.

The set has a 12in screen wrapped in a oversized walnut and mahogany cabinet, with a mirror-fitted lid that pops open to reflect the upward facing display out toward the viewer.

It has the original 240/405-line selector switch in place. The BBC switched to 625-line PAL in the 1960s. Around a third of the TV's parts are not original, however, though they were replaced with parts identical to the originals.

A Mr G B Davis of College Road, Dulwich purchased this particular model, for £99/15 - more than half the average annual wage at the time - on 26 November 1936.

Unfortunately for Davis, Crystal Palace burned down 3 days after he bought it, meaning he couldn't receive signal until after the war - a wait of ten years.

Davis' family is putting the set under the hammer at Bonhams with a pre-sale estimate of £3000-5000. However, the fact that it's the oldest working TV in the country and comes with all the original invoices, experts say it should fetch much more. ®