A long forgotten blast from the past, predating the Interweb, Wikipedia, Google maps etc, a database using the then new computer technology of networked BBC microcomputers introduced into UK schools - the 1986 Domesday project which I had some input into and can now finally see the full final result some 25 years later.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/story

Why on earth did they use laser disks read only by BBC computers? Seems that regular laser discs, or CDs (which were rather new then) would have been a smarter medium. Or even tapes. I remember my dad backing up data on to tapes well into the 90s.

The BBC microcomputer was available in UK schools from around 1983 onwards. The school initially started out on the Sinclair ZX-81 and Apple IIe before getting our hands on the BBC microcomputers. This was the age of multiple computer systems families and OS's before the dominance of IBM PC + DOS standard and Apple Mac machines throughout the world.

The Laser disk ROM was essentially an analogue based device, i.e. the individual photos and mapping blocks being individual frames of a analogue video stream. The BBC micro was basically a controller for the Laserdisk system using a video overlay over the laser disk analog video output. This was a time before desktop digitally capable multimedia computers were available (even then Steve Jobs Next Computer workstation still wouldn't have been able to handle digitally stored and compressed video, audio and imagery although something like an Atari Transputer workstation around 87-88 may have been powerful enough)

CD-ROM technology didn't become widely available until the mid 90s with the introduction of Computers powerful enough to run Windows 3.1 and 95 (Pentium), I don't remember them being used before that even on the Apollo Domain Workstation network we had at University in the late 80s or the very expensive 386 PC computer host used for very cheap concurrent Transputer development board (the transputer would leave the 386 for dead in terms of computer processing power)

The BBC micro was also at the time around 1/5 the cost of an original IBM PC for generally a similar capability. These were the days when a 20MB hard drive may have cost $3-5000.

Of course today the difference in computing power from these days is immense but even the Apple iPad and iPhone can trace its linage back to the Acorn BBC microcomputer.

The Domesday multimedia database was certainly well ahead of its time with it rudimentary textual hyperlinking and geomapping. I even found this little gem of information...



http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-332000-729000/page/6

1985-6 now seems such a long time ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH8wRXwnB-A