ten and fifteen times more sensitive than the original Emitron and iconoscope tubes and, in some cases, this ratio was considerably greater. The same year, the British government set up a committee (the "Television Committee") to advise on the future of TV broadcasting. The committee recommended that a "high definition" service (defined by them as being a system of 240 lines or more) to be run by the BBC be established. The recommendation was accepted and tenders were sought from industry. Two tenders were received: one from the Baird company offering a 240-line mechanical system, and the other from EMI offering a 405-line all-electronic one employing the Emitron. The Television Committee advised that they were unable to choose between the two systems and that both tenders should be accepted, the two systems to be run together for an experimental period. Broadcasting of the resulting BBC Television Service from its Alexandra Palace site began on 2 November 1936, at first time-sharing broadcasts with the 240-line Baird system. However, in January 1937, after three months of trials, the Baird system was abandoned in favour of exclusive broadcasting with the 405-line Marconi-EMI system on VHF, which was more reliable and visibly superior. This was the world's first regular high-definition television service and became the standard for all British TV broadcasts until the 1960s. It was later adopted by other TV organisations around the world. The Emitron was used for the first outside broadcasting, at the televising of the Coronation of George VI and Elizabeth by the BBC in May 1937. In 1955, Schoenberg was appointed to the board of EMI. He was awarded the IET Faraday Medal from the British Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1954 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1962. He died in London in 1963 and was buried in the Liberal Jewish Cemetery, Willesden, in the London Borough of Brent. In fiction Schoenberg was portrayed by Leon Lissek in the 1986 TV movie The Fools on the Hill by Jack Rosenthal which dramatised the events around the first broadcasts by the BBC from Alexandra Palace in 1936. See also History of television Bibliography "Shoenberg, Sir Isaac", Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 4 January 2006. "Sir Isaac Shoenberg", Making the Modern World. Retrieved 4 January 2006. References 1880 births 1963 deaths History of television in the United Kingdom People from Pinsk Belarusian Jews British Jews Television pioneers Belarusian inventors British