The first Olympics to be televised. The games were screened in 25 theatres in Berlin and throughout Germany.
The first Olympics to have a torch relay. The torch was ignited by rays of the sun at the temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece and carried by 3,075 runners each covering 1 km through Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany.
These games were televised by two German firms, Telefunken and Fernseh, the using RCA and Farnsworth equipment, respectively. This marked the first live television coverage of a sports event in world history.
The games were the first to have live television coverage. The German Post Office, using equipment from Telefunken, broadcast over 70 hours of coverage to special viewing rooms throughout Berlin and Postdam and a few private TV sets, transmitting from the Paul Nipkow TV Station. Unfortunately, they were using three different types of TV cameras, so blackouts would occur when changing from one type to another. Also, the quality was generally poor. As one New York journalist said "Only the polo game show up fairly clearly when black or chestnut ponies are used."