Relive the 1980’s Domesday project on the original laser disc technology at The National Museum of Computing
16 May 2011
Visitors to The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park can use the original 1980's laser disc technology to see the complete 1980's BBC Domesday archive, now the focus of 25th anniversary celebrations. TNMOC has two of the very few fully working systems still in existence and accessible to the public.
Leading the celebrations, the BBC has reloaded the Domesday Community Disc online and is inviting the public to explore and update the 1980’s community-sourced photographs on its website.
Domesday was an ambitious 1986 initiative, run by the BBC, Acorn Computers, Philips and Logica aiming to create a record of life in Britain in the 1980s. More than one million people participated in recording what they thought might be of interest in 1000 years’ time. The focus was on everyday life, the ordinary rather than the extraordinary. Schools and community groups were particularly active and contributed almost 150,000 pages of text and more than 23,000 photographs to the Community Disc.
At TNMOC, Education Officer Chris Monk has seen growing interest in Domesday since he made the original functioning 1980’s system available to visitors last September. He remembers the project beginnings: “When Domesday was originally launched, its key technology – the LV-ROM (LaserVision ROM) – was state of the art multimedia. With the ability to store up to 324MB of digital data on each side as well as 54000 analogue video frames and offering interactivity, the technology seemed to have enormous potential. LV-ROM players were expensive and the format never really caught on, soon being overtaken by the cheaper Compact Disc ROM (CD-ROM). As a result, not many contributors saw the fruits of their labours.
“Visitors to the Museum often tell me that they contributed to the project over twenty-five years ago, but never had the opportunity to see their work. Now they can – on the original laser disc and Acorn BBC Master micro technology, as well as on the BBC website. They can experience the project exactly the way it was originally envisaged.”
“Today, many TNMOC visitors like to search their 1980’s location on Domesday to see how things have changed. They spot that new road, a missing factory or some new houses. High streets show how some shops survive the years and how some fade away. Others spot the changing fashions and the rather dated cars, but there is not a mobile phone to be seen. One visitor even saw a much younger version of himself and another found the words he had written as a primary school child -- he was delighted when we printed out his text on a 1980’s dot matrix printer!”
TNMOC is offering the public access to both the Community and the National discs of the authentic original BBC Domesday Project.
The Community Disc includes UK Ordnance Survey maps, community photographs and text contributions and is the one which BBC Reloaded has made available online with a new user interface. Visitors can therefore compare the original and the contemporary interfaces.
TNMOC is also offering access the National Disc (which is not available on BBC online). It includes thousands of images of the eighties, statistics, articles and video extracts from the BBC News of the time
For TNMOC opening times, see www.tnmoc.org
For the BBC Online version of the Community disc, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday
About The National Museum of Computing
The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, an independent charity, houses the largest collection of functional historic computers in Europe, including a rebuilt Colossus, the world’s first electronic programmable computer.
The Museum complements the Bletchley Park Trust’s story of code breaking up to the Colossus and allows visitors to follow the development of computing from the ultra-secret pioneering efforts of the 1940s through the mainframes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s. New working exhibits are regularly unveiled and the public can already view a rebuilt and fully operational Colossus, the restoration of the Harwell / WITCH computer, and an ICL 2966, one of the workhorse mainframes computers of the 1980s, many of the earliest desktops of the 1980s and 1990s, plus the NPL Technology of the Internet Gallery. In June 2010 TNMOC hosted Britain’s first-ever Vintage Computer Festival.
Funders of the Museum include Bletchley Park Capital Partners, InsightSoftware.com, PGP Corporation, IBM, NPL, HP Labs, BCS, Black Marble, and the School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire.
The Museum is currently open on Thursdays and Saturdays from 1pm, and on Bank Holidays in spring and summer. Guided tours are also available at 2.30pm on Tuesdays, Sundays and some other days. Groups may visit at other times by arrangement and special organisation Away-Days can be booked.
For more information, see www.tnmoc.org and follow @tnmoc on Twitter and The National Museum of Computing on Facebook.
Media Contacts
Stephen Fleming
Palam Communications for TNMOC
+44 (0) 1635 299116
sfleming@palam.co.uk