
BBC releases its computer history archive - dboreham
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/94265de9-a16a-4daa-b128-3bbe01e1b10c
======
piceas
(1984) Electronic Office, Episode 6: Easy to Use? has a nice demo from Bell
Labs showing an interactive map, navigation, and restaurant search.

"There are many possibilities because you can imagine it being used, for
example in a car, in connection with some kind of advanced mobile phone
service in which you would actually call in from your car terminal and get
directions, and you could even imagine that the computer was tracking the car
in some way so it could tell you when to make your turns" \- Michael Lesk

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/6cfbf61582b1fd8a811cc02be0d24560)

~~~
open-source-ux
From the same programme, Peter Keen from the London Business School has this
to say about expert systems:

"...Expert systems are really slightly dumb systems that exploit the speed and
cheapness of computer chips...There are many expert systems in the literature
which are nothing more than a series of fast if-then-else rules...you do that
a couple of hundred thousand times it can look remarkably intelligent"

It's well worth watching this little clip. I wonder if what he says is still
true?

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/13d3f4b73e9a2830fecfdc9684805ddf)

------
jonhendry18
Cool.

Episode of "Micro Live" with a brief demo of a Fairlight CMI Series III

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/b8a2ca1e800873c2cd8f38e5ed8bd5b4)

Clip from Micro Live that visits Infocom during the development of text
adventure "Spellbreaker". LISP mentioned in passing.

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/a2e1d6d7656c5505bd3dc74a8ef8d392)

2011 documentary on Steve Jobs: "Billion Dollar Hippy":

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/a54d226a1c0d98b7d93f4859efa34421)

~~~
jdietrich
My pick from the archive is "Now the Chips are Down", an eerily prescient 1978
documentary about what was then called the "silicon chip revolution".

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/d39fe5ab963b83309447394e46b6ad99)

~~~
markb139
A 12 year old me watched this when it was broadcast. I knew after seeing the
programme what I wanted do for a career. 40 years later I'm a software
engineer - my teachers at school would be most suprised :)

------
rasur
Mildly disappointed that there's no listing of "The Net" in there. I help
created some shared virtual worlds for the series circa '96 which involved the
participation of members of the public in the 6 spaces we created.

Hell, there was even a short clip of myself and (later to become my wife in
reality) one of the TV production company members getting married in VR, aired
on BBC TV.

Ah well.

The team I was part of did it all again the year after, for Channel 4 TV
(Renegade TV "Heaven & Hell").

Good times. Glad to see the BBC computing resources from over the years
offered again - takes me back to my teens, exploring this new world of (ha!)
fantastic opportunities.

~~~
UncleSlacky
I remember knackering the pause function on my video recorder trying to read
the "blipvert" style items at the end of each programme.

~~~
twic
Infoblasts!

Blipverts are quite a lot worse for you: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJP-
Ilw_xaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJP-Ilw_xaY)

------
codeulike
"Acorn have been evaluating their own 32-bit RISC processor called ARM ..."
December 1987

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/5c1a13c434e15b3b8f3714239151cbb1)

Little did we know how important Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson's chip was
going to be.

------
ggm
I was in the UK across much of this time, and I was a person in computer
science across all of that time. Somehow, I cannot identify with this as "my"
story.

I think it says much more about me than the BBC btw. I think this is a
fantastic "oral/social history" thing to do. Its a slice of time.

I think a lot of people (like me) who had access to sufficient mainframe power
not to want to tinker at home on a PC didn't realize what they meant, for the
future of computing! (I spent a brief period building a power supply for the
Acorn Atom, which was a 6502 precursor to the BBC micro, and found it
sufficiently painful after I managed to get some code working on it, I never
really went back. I still have a C60 cassette of the basic code in kansas city
standard whistles somewhere).

The moment where CeeFax sent code out in the VBI was a huge signal. Oddly,
much later on I tried to get some people interested in using the VBI timing to
distribute a stratum-1 clock for nTP.

~~~
pjc50
> a lot of people (like me) who had access to sufficient mainframe power

Yes, that can't have been a lof of people.

The microcomputer movement was hugely influential to people who were children
and teenagers at the time, since they were the ones able to spend lots of
lightly supervised time trying things and learning at an impressionable age.

The BBC has a good list of "origin stories" of founders who started on the BBC
micro here:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15969065](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15969065)

~~~
jacquesm
I had both. At work VS/9 on a series 90 or a 4381 with a large number of
people hanging off the back, at home a BBC Micro with two floppies (once I
could afford them) and a 128K Solidisk.

Between those three I couldn't wait to get home to get something done.

The edit-compile-test cycle on those mainframes was so ridiculously long it
would be a good day if you got three turnarounds, on a bad day you got none.
Compared to seconds for my home stuff. Shortly after that I got an Atari 68K
machine and that felt like unlocking God mode.

Mainframes are powerful in the same way that tractors are powerful: you can do
an awful lot of work if you have an awful lot of work.

If you are just programming or learning then something smaller is far more
effective, on top of that the lack of resources will teach you all you need to
know about efficiency.

~~~
walshemj
I recall at my fist job one of the engineers coming into out terminal room and
logging onto an ICL mainframe at AWE and sighing when she saw 48 jobs in front
of hers in the queue.

~~~
Zenst
Ah yes, George OS and the ICL 29xx series, fun times.

Had great fun with the SPV command, used that to code up a keylogger. Was able
to pull up a spoof login screen on all the terminals using that and able to
pass off input as commands and the end user would be none the wiser.

Other great find was that back then discs were big and expensive and not as
reliable, so they rotated the discs to even out the wear. They also didn't
fully erase them and if you created a file, you had to specify to zero it as
an option. This allowed you to create a file, dump the contents and read what
was previously upon the discs. Now as the operator console would create a
journal log of everything typed (including login and password - everything
typed) and factoring in disc rotation, then it was possible as a user to
create files upon what was a disc previously used for console journal logging
and read the contents. This yielded the username and password of the system
admin at college and even today recall that wonderful admin/5588 username and
password.

Fun times indeed.

------
codeulike
About the July 1984 Data Protection Act

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/56dcbbdeb792a0ddc3c64cb9a88d2b65)

"The increasing ease with which personal details can be obtained has worried
groups concerned with civil liberties"

"Holding personal data on your computer will probably mean sending form E22 to
this address in Cheshire ..."

------
timthorn
They've had a handful of episodes available for a while in their (archived!)
archive site - but great to see the whole collection available.

The aforementioned site also has other greats such as some Tomorrow's World,
Horizon - and the Great Egg Race. Well worth a few hours:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/collections.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/collections.shtml)

------
dboreham
Like going in a time machine!

For example this show was I believe responsible for the founding* of Inmos,
where I worked in the 1980s : [https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/d39fe5ab963b83309447394e46b6ad99)

*More accurately : the _funding_ of..

------
voltagex_
Heh, looks like BBC got some help from the public - this one's got to be a
capture from a home VHS.

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/d7e7014f662a9e2703162d6d229f867e)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hope they prosecuted those horrible data thieves! /s

------
slipstream-
I downloaded all the floppy images from this archive, and found some
interesting (from a historical perspective) documents on some of them.

Lists of computing equipment owned by the BBC in 1987, letters responding to
what appears to be viewers who wrote in with questions, that sort of thing.

------
angrygoat
The BBC micro played a huge role in my childhood - my family's Model B was the
first computer I used. Dad had a subscription to 'Beebug', a great magazine
which came with code listings and explanations of how the code worked. It's
all online these days (I think Dad probably still has boxes and boxes of the
originals somewhere.) Some good memories for other old beeb folks like me:
[http://8bs.com/beebugmags.htm](http://8bs.com/beebugmags.htm)

------
codeulike
SpecDrum, the spectrum drum machine!

[https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy-
project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/46de54dc37f32efb835a37c3b0c84e80)

"£29.95, and at the moment its only available from Boots"

------
royjacobs
This is really cool! I've always been impressed by the fact that the original
literacy project was undertaken at all, but this now also extends to the
preservation effort!

Edit: Oh wow, some of the older programs (shot on film) are even scanned in
HD. This is seriously impressive.

------
dang
We changed the URL from
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44628869](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44628869).
Both articles are worth reading but the current one has more juicy detail.

------
rambojazz
Is this material still under copyright or is it in the public domain?

~~~
jonhendry18
Almost certainly under copyright.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I wonder what the situation is of a programme, produced by a now extinct
company, that was videoed by a viewer from a BBC TV broadcast. The law in the
UK allows for time-shifting only -- no format shifting nor archiving, no
repeat watching (!) -- so the preservation by an ordinary viewer would have
been unlawful, the use by the BBC couldn't be warranted. The law would demand
the destruction (without viewing) of the copy.

There is apparently now orphaned work legislation in UK
([https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-
copyright](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright)), but this
doesn't seem to apply, this would definitely be an unlawful copy.

~~~
pjc50
The BBC are presumably the original copyright holder, or licensee.

Edit: also remember that almost all of this is civil law rather than criminal
law; if there's no original copyright holder to initiate an action then
nothing happens.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The BBC would have been a licensee, but I can't see how without being assignee
or creator you could use an unlawful copy. Orphaned work legislation appears
to relate only to copies that are (apparently) lawfully created but for whom
the copyright holder can't be traced; and it's notable that it seems orphaned
works can't be used commercially in UK.

Yes, it's tortuous, but that doesn't mean it's lawful if the creators don't
know of the tortfeasance. The criminality of copyright in UK is a mystery to
me though.

The BBC have benefitted, as have the public, several times from individual
archiving. It would be great if they'd take a stand for including it in fair
dealing.

------
onion-soup
yet still uses unencrypted hosting of their website

