Whatever Happened to Vera?

The road to technological progress is littered with unsuccessful prototypes and their inventors. In\xc2\xa0British television there is perhaps no better example than John Logie Baird, universally recognised as the\xc2\xa0successful inventor of the technology, but not of the successful business model. Another, lesser known,\xc2\xa0casualty is the Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus (VERA), developed within the BBC Design Unit between\xc2\xa01952 and 1958. VERA had the potential to change the production and working practices of British television,\xc2\xa0in ways yet to be imagined or apparent, but just as it reached completion it was superceded by an American\xc2\xa0import.This article, based entirely on secondary sources, seeks to illuminate and narrativise some of the threads in\xc2\xa0the hidden, or certainly largely unexplored, history of video in British television, to identify a pathway for further\xc2\xa0development of this research, notably at the BBC Written Archive at Caversham.The start date of 1955 recognises the ending of the BBC\xe2\x80\x99s television monopoly and the changes and shifts\xc2\xa0that the BBC had to adjust to as broadcasting became a duopolistic and unionised industry. The end date\xc2\xa0reflects a point where the quality of \xe2\x80\x98non-broadcast\xe2\x80\x99 video technology reached the standard that had previously\xc2\xa0been set as the broadcast minimum by the broadcasting unions