05-12-2011, 12:10 PM
If, like me, you cut your computing teeth on the BBC Micro back in the 1980s (my first geophysical interpretation program occupied less memory than an icon on your desktop now), today is a great day, as it sees the launch of the BBC's Domesday Reloaded website.
The Domesday Project was the ultimate development of the BBC computing effort, ahead of its time, and only really matched once Google Earth/Maps and Wikipedia got going. By hooking a video disc player up to the micro, access to information about any part of the British Isles was provided.
However, it was overpriced (I, with my humble 32Kb BBC B, could only look on in wonder and imagine how useful it could be) and it's ultimate failure and the subsequent loss of ability to read the analogue (not, note, digital) media is an object lesson to those who put their faith in digital storage. The story of its recovery verges on an epic in its own right.
See a snapshot of Britain in 1986 (O heady days!) at the Domesday Reloaded site.
Mike Bishop
The Domesday Project was the ultimate development of the BBC computing effort, ahead of its time, and only really matched once Google Earth/Maps and Wikipedia got going. By hooking a video disc player up to the micro, access to information about any part of the British Isles was provided.
However, it was overpriced (I, with my humble 32Kb BBC B, could only look on in wonder and imagine how useful it could be) and it's ultimate failure and the subsequent loss of ability to read the analogue (not, note, digital) media is an object lesson to those who put their faith in digital storage. The story of its recovery verges on an epic in its own right.
See a snapshot of Britain in 1986 (O heady days!) at the Domesday Reloaded site.
Mike Bishop
