Prestel
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Prestel, the brand name for the British General Post Office's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system launched in 1979. It was developed under the leadership of Samuel Fedida at the Post Office Research Laboratories.
In common with the Ceefax and ORACLE services provided by the BBC and ITV television companies, the system used a modified television to display information in a non-scrolling window of 40x24 text characters, with some simple graphics, conforming to the 1974 CEPT1 standard. Prestel could also be viewed on a home computer. Unlike the limited data available on Ceefax and Oracle, Prestel offered an extensive range of information, which was held on a number of mirrored computers throughout the country. However the former services were provided free, encoded with the television transmissions, while Prestel data was transmitted via telephone lines to a set-top box terminal, and while this enabled interactive services and e-mail to be provided, it also involved purchasing the terminal, and paying both a monthly subscription and the cost of local telephone calls.
As a result of the costs involved, Prestel gained little market penetration among private consumers, but met with some limited success among businesses. Consequently it was moved to British Telecom's commercial division and eventually came to specialise in the provision of financial data.
The 1984 intrusion into the Prestel mailbox of the Duke of Edinburgh garnered the network unfavourable press, particularly when the simplicity of its security measures became apparent. The subsequent failure to successfully prosecute the intruders led to the introduction of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Prestel was eventually sold by British Telecom, the former telecom arm of the GPO, and purchased by the Financial Times in 1994.
Prestel Online, which was an Internet service provider spinoff, was sold to Scottish Telecom, and as of 5 June 2002, has since been merged into their other ISP activities.
The dial-up viewdata service was run down, as the Internet gained in popularity, and continues today in name only, as the FT's financial information service.
In contrast to the demise of the British system, the French version of Prestel, Teletel/Minitel which used the same standard, received substantial public backing when millions of Minitel terminals were handed out free to telephone subscribers. As a consequence the Teletel network became very popular in France, and remains well used, with access now also possible over the Internet.
A closed access Videotex system based on the Prestel model was developed by the travel industry, and continues to be almost universally used by travel agents throughout the country - see Viewdata.
See also
- World War II Colossus computer, also built by the Post Office Research Laboratories
- UK topics