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[sheddyian]

Post Office film from 1969, showing what the 1990's might be like.

I've posted this in the broadband forum because, well, they are talking about broadband.  It's interesting to note that there's a lot of accurate prediction in this film, if you look behind the clunky interfaces and styling.

They didn't foresee mobile phones though


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqtoVmACDng

Ian

[roseway]

A fascinating bit of archive film. Did everyone have blue faces in those days? I don't remember it that way.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Tremendous stuff.  Shows the largely unapreciated pedigree of today's BT empire, that these guys were able to predict online banking, and a networked work from home culture, all these years ago.

All the same, I wonder what they'd have thought of the idea that, instead of all that 'coaxial cable', a technology based on ordinary telephony pairs would provide - and far exceed - the requirements for the services they predicted?

But most of all - even more than the mini-skirts, Morris 1100s and MK1 Cortinas - I love the HG Wells 'War of the World' style dipod monitors.  Did they really exist, or were they just mock-ups?

[sheddyian]

I wonder what they'd have thought of the idea that, instead of all that 'coaxial cable', a technology based on ordinary telephony pairs would provide - and far exceed - the services they predicted?

My first encounter with networks was thick wire Ethernet, a very thick, incredibly non-bendy coax cable that you had to drill into and attach a special tap unit to, then use a thick drop cable with multiple cores (19? I forget) down to the computer.  This achieved 10Mbit/second.  There were all sorts of restrictions on tap unit spacing, lengths of drop cables and the like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5

Incredible that you can now achieve over twice that speed on standard telephone wires!

Ian

[burakkucat]

But most of all - even more than the mini-skirts, Morris 1100s and MK1 Cortinas - I love the HG Wells 'War of the World' style dipod monitors.  Did they really exist, or were they just mock-ups?

I believe a small number of the dipod monitors existed at Dollis Hill.

[Bald_Eagle1]

"Yes, marvellous" 

[UncleUB]

Can we have 1969 beer prices as well please........ ...........Was about 1s 10d a pint as I seem to remember(About 9p)

[HPsauce]

My first encounter with networks was thick wire Ethernet

Remember it well, and the vampire clamps....

I also remember doing a "forward-looking" project around 30 years ago (at least I'd guess) on digitising medical imaging for a hospital that was being rebuilt, as a "flagship" project with government research money involved.
In the end the cash dematerialised but the technology was (for those days) quite interesting. It was stuff that is now, in slightly different form, becoming commonplace in X-ray, NMR etc.

The data (image) distribution was initially looking at coax ethernet but then discovered the "new-fangled" twisted-pair stuff. And believe it or not, we were considering GigaBit speeds. The only source for that was a project developing the network for what became the ISS (International Space Station) which at that time was a very long way from launch but was being designed & developed, I think at that time as a US-only project with another name.

How things have changed.......  8)

[asbokid]

Can we have 1969 beer prices as well please........ ...........Was about 1s 10d a pint as I seem to remember(About 9p)

Was that beer as we know it today, or was it more a kind of mead?

cheers, a

[HPsauce]

Was that beer as we know it today

That depends what you call beer?
My kids call lager "beer" and what I call beer they call "ale".

It was the era of Watneys Red Barrel so "real ale" was an increasingly difficult thing to find, but around London at least you could still find some decent brews if you knew the pubs. 

[burakkucat]

And one other item of nostalgia from 1969 . . . correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that the year in which the BBC first broadcast "Something Completely DIfferent"? (Cue The Liberty Bell March, by J P Sousa.) 

[Black Sheep]

Can we have 1969 beer prices as well please........ ...........Was about 1s 10d a pint as I seem to remember(About 9p)

Was that beer as we know it today, or was it more a kind of mead?

cheers, a

Ha ha, asbo. 

[guest]

What I find interesting about it is the fact they don't even mention TV, even though they were well aware of US cable networks. Obviously a good deal of "we're the GPO, not the BBC" ingrained at that stage

Different times too - an ultra-violet screen to print onto photo paper. Nothing at all could go wrong with that and result in horrible injury litigation could it?

You can see the start of things like Ceefax there - TV being "wider bandwidth" than anything else then. Then of course Prestel.

Very amusing that video conversations are still very much the exception even today. I think the voice telephone provides a bit of "privacy" which people like.