Ceefax: The early days

For those interested, this was a great service too. Early days of investing and retriving historical data on companies via 4tel's Shares 3000 pages was the only way for private investors to get data freely!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmjKAM1NVWE

Ceefax was a great example of quality sub-editing - every headline was exactly the same length, but they generally sounded natural and communicated plenty of information

The various teletext services in the UK were a powerful connector in the days before a consumer internet. Someone up thread mentioned stock information available to consumers - probably helping contribute to the boom in the general public owning and trading stocks along with the rash of privatizations that happened in the 80s.

Buying discounted airline flights and package tours through the TV; classified listings... all great precursors of online commerce, normalizing it ahead of the revolution that came with the web.

But the strength of Ceefax in particular, among these services was the written content. Well written articles on up to days news (often long before other sources), and sports (instant sports results - an amazing service in its time), which foreshadowed the great BBC website that eventually followed, probably teaching institutional skills that carried over.

Ceefax and the commercial teletext competitors represent another example of where solid government sponsored innovation can have big societal benefits and provide a roadmap for business to follow.

Brings back happy memories of hacking on the BBC Micro.

    > MODE 7
    > PRINT CHR$(136);"GOODBYE CEEFAX!"

There was a portion of the Ceefax bandwidth given over to downloading BBC computer programs: http://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Acorn-Teletext-A...