1999: Emmy Award for Sound in Syncs

Nearly 30 years after its completion, the BBC's sound distribution technology, Sound in Syncs, has won an Emmy - BBC R&D's third.

Three of the engineers who worked on the project in the late 1960s -- the department's current head of Business and Engineering, John Astle, and former Kingswood Warren colleagues Chris Dalton and Colin Spicer -- collected the prized trophy last week at a ceremony in New York's Times Square.

Sound in Syncs (SiS) -- the digital television sound transmission system used between studios and transmitters -- was in BBC service for more than 15 years from 1970 and adopted by many other broadcasters. It enabled the sound and picture signals to be combined and, believes Astle, was the first example of broadcast equipment, in quantity production, to make extensive use of digital techniques.

It revolutionised the distribution of television sound across national and international networks. Previously, TV sound was carried across the UK on special quality copper wire circuits, sometimes several hundred miles in length. As well as savings on circuit rentals, SiS also produced dramatic improvements in sound quality and greater reliability.

SiS was invented by the then BBC Research Department and then transformed into the operational success by BBC Designs Department who developed the manufactured equipment. A follow-up version of the system -- which received the Queen's Award for technological equipment in 1974 -- was developed by the BBC in the 1980s for NICAM stereo sound. This was used until the early 1990s when the Corporation switched to all digital distribution for sound and video.