Wednesday 24 October 2012

Bye bye Ceefax

Ceefax is no more.
Bye bye message
Quite a nice little retro video capture from Ceefax Thu 27 March 1980 below:

Read about the "boffins" that made it work:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20032531

And look at some nostalgic photographs:
Boffins - photographed in the olden days
What Wikipedia has to say:

And my personal three highlights:
  1. The "Mix" button - click this and you got a mixture of telly and Ceefax text - the text meant you couldn't see the TV program properly and the TV program meant you couldn't read the text.
  2. The "Reveal" button - as a kid I'd do the quizzes and through December I'd religiously do the advent calendar each morning.
  3. Watching the football scores on a Saturday. In the early 1980s this would be on a single page and it would notify you whilst watching telly (Bonanza/Dukes of Hazard) when there had been a goal. Later on they decided to put the goal scorer names on. This meant it constantly jumped through three pages. You site watching the counter race from 100 to 316 or whatever number the page was. Then you'd wait hours and hours for the Ceefax person to update the league table.

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