Thursday 14 August 2014

Oracle, 12th November 1981 (4 teletext lines per field)

Here's a really good quality early grab.  It was taken from a tape with Space Shuttle launch coverage on it; this is from STS-2, the second Shuttle launch.




This would appear to be a first generation copy.  Earlier in the tape there is coverage of STS-1, from April that year, but it was terrible quality, in terms of teletext; I think it was a dub. 

This is the best P100 I could find:



Bear in mind that this is P100 too, which has the most instances of the page to integrate.  I wonder if it's possible to better integrate each character?

Anyway, back to ITV, and telesoftware made an earlier appearance than you would think.  The BBC offered a similar service.  The BBC Micro wasn't around at this point, so what was the target platform here? 



Here's some source:





Schools programmes, complete with opt-outs:



Yes indeed: this is teletext 'Spot the Ball':



News headlines for that day:



The news stories themselves kept this format up until Oracle closed in 1992:




Now this I must try and decode at some point!



On to some 80s lulz:




The below is now covered in Kerrang! magazine:




Come on, STV, pull your fingers out!




Testing now:



...it wouldn't be teletext without a clock cracker:



...and finally, sunglasses at the ready for this monstrosity:







3 comments:

  1. Brilliant work, these are great.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Jason,

    I think these are fascinating, particularly the glitch and teletext version of spot the ball. Pity they didn't do an *actual* teletext spot the ball. And those metal pages would now be cheesy Cash for Gold ads!

    Hey, I don't suppose there's any way we could get hold of these raw teletext frames for a project we're putting together? It would be great if we could show them in teletext form on the web through http://teletext40.com or actual hardware (televisions!).

    For reference, my email address is dan [at] illarterate [dot] co [dot] uk.

    Dan
    http://danfarrimond.co.uk
    http://twitter.com/illarterate

    ReplyDelete
  3. The source code for the software you see is BBC BASIC, of that I'm 100% certain.

    I think you've got your year wrong. I don't think your pages are from 1981, they're from 1982.

    Reasoning:

    - Columbia's first operational mission was on November 11 1982.
    - The BBC Micro was launched 1/12/1981.

    ReplyDelete