Ceefax
| Ceefax | |
|---|---|
Pages from Ceefax title card
|
|
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production company(s) | BBC |
| Release | |
| Original network |
BBC analogue (via "Text" button), BBC Two overnight |
| Picture format | 4:3 |
| Original release | 23 September 1974 – 23 October 2012 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows |
Oracle (1974–1992) Teletext Ltd. (1993–2010) |
| External links | |
| Website (Ceased) | |
| Production website | |
Ceefax was the world's first teletext information service. It was started by the BBC in 1974 and ended at 23:32:19 BST on 23 October 2012, in line with the digital switchover being completed in Northern Ireland. The service then ceased after 38 years of broadcasting.
During the late 1960s, engineers Geoff Larkby and Barry Pyatt, at the Designs Department (Television Group) of the BBC, worked on an experimental analogue text transmission system. Its object was to transmit a printable page of text during the nocturnal "close-down" period of normal television transmission. Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, then Director General of the BBC, was interested in making farming and stock-market prices available as hard copy via the dormant TV transmitters. The remit received by BBC Designs Department was "the equivalent of one page of The Times newspaper to be transmitted during shut-down".
Their system employed a modified, Alexander Muirhead designed, rotating drum, facsimile transmitter, and Larkby & Pyatt's own, unique, design of hard-copy printer. This printer used pressure-sensitive "till-roll" paper passing over a drum with a raised helix of steel wire. The drum was synchronised with the transmission drum by means of the "Start of Page", and "Start of Line" information inherent in the Muirhead system. Printing was effected by a hardened steel blade driven by, initially, a loudspeaker-type moving coil, then by a printed-circuit coil, and finally by a special ceramic piezo element manufactured by Brush-Clevite. The combination of rotating helix and oscillating moving blade, with the till-roll paper moving linearly between them, enabled a raster to be drawn on the paper.
This early electro-mechanical system was nicknamed BEEBFAX – "Beeb" was the contemporary popular name for the BBC, and "fax" from the facsimile machine. Initial tests were conducted by sending scans of Christmas Cards over the internal telephone system from London to Bristol in 1969.
The system was less than popular in the Designs Department laboratory, due to the clatter of the Muirhead facsimile, and the whining of the printer, so the project was shelved. Messrs Larkby & Pyatt went on to propose several improvements using digital technology, but the electro-mechanical system was finally scrapped in 1970.
The idea was later taken up again, this time in digital and on-screen form, under the new name of CEEFAX, and the new system was announced in October 1972, and following test transmissions in 1972–74, the Ceefax system went live on 23 September 1974 with thirty pages of information. Developed by BBC engineers who were working on ways of providing televisual subtitles for the deaf, it was the first teletext system in the world. James Redmond, the BBC's Director of Engineering at the time, was a particular enthusiast. Other broadcasters soon took up the idea, including the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), who had developed the incompatible ORACLE teletext system, at around the same time. Before the Internet and the World Wide Web become popular, Ceefax pages were often the first location to report a breaking story or headline.
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