It’s been nearly 2 years since I last did any blogging – this has been largely due to a lack of time.
However, I’ve missed it and decided to get back into it.
So, I’ll begin with The Domesday Project:
This was begun between 1984 and 1986 to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book which for those not familiar was a book commissioned in 1086 by the then King of England, William I (More commonly known as William the Conqueror) in order to determine what land and property existed in the United Kingdom and who owned it. This was for the purposes of tax collection, but also served a useful piece of information from a social history perspective. While it is not fully clear how long the collection process took it is suggested that it took the best part of a year to collate this information into the book.
To celebrate the 900th anniversary the BBC asked schools across the country to create their own version and a snapshot in time named The Domesday Project. Being done by children and teachers they gave themselves 2 years to record the information. Created in association with Acorn Computers, all the data was entered electronically onto a purpose built computer system. Cutting edge for its time it was able to collect text, photos and videos but also would become the google street view of its time.
It’s biggest flaw was it was too cutting edge and the times weren’t ready for the technology.
The data was catalogued on a new storage medium – Laser Disc. Using a scsi controller, the player could be attached to a BBC Master Computer and when combined with a tracker ball (precursor to the modern trackball or trackpad). All in it cost the best part of £5000 which at the time was the price of a small family car. Therefore, sales were low and the project went into obscurity.
This week, The project hit the news as word came through that a part of the BBC had, 25 years on, managed to convert the data into a format that would be accessible to all for free on the web. The concern had come that not enough of the laser disc players existed and that the discs themselves had become corrupted because of a flaw in their design.
Several previous attempts had been made – firstly using emulation of the original BBC Master software on windows PC’s, then a version which did not require the emulation as the software had been re-written for windows PC’s. But finally, the ultimate which does not require any software be installed on the end user’s computer other than a web browser. The domesday1986 blog documents this while the Beebmaster Website shows the technology used to create/play the original discs.
The link for the successfully restored data can be found here:
Domesday reloaded