BPN 1698: Fading files

On December 5^th, 2014 I told the story about the first daily newsletter to go online in Europe in 1984. The newsletter was marketed by VNU on Telecom Gold for some years and then an aggregator incorporated the newsletter in its portfolio, most likely on the host Dialog (these days a ProQuest resource). This is all I know about the life of the electronic newsletter. I mailed Clive Snell, who designed the marketing for the newsletter, to inquire about the life cycle of IDB Online, but he could not help (see mail below). Checking on internet you cannot find any edition nor even a reference to a source on internet anymore. There is a good chance that all the editions have not been preserved or just faded out.

Hi Jak,
Good to hear from you. I think you know more about all this than I do.
I have been away from that world for some 20 years
so can't help with any of your queries at all.
Best wishes
Clive

Looking further in my archive, I hit upon another electronic newsletter I contributed to in the beginning of the eighties. The Online Chronicle was a fortnightly online newsletter, produced by Online Inc, publisher of the print magazines Online and Database, later acquired by Information Today. The newsletter was started by the editor of Online, Jean-Paul Emard and ran from 1981 till 1988. I contributed European news to it, some 300 articles.  These were loaded on one of the oldest online information services, Dialog as file 170. Dialog originated within the aerospace industry Lockheed, was acquired by the owner of Reuters, the Canadian publisher Thomson and later sold to ProQuest.  No files can be retrieved nor a mentioned source  on internet. The only content I have left of the articles is a list of bibliographic data such as date stamps and 308 headlines. Perhaps I might have some of the information on a floppy disc, but who can still read a floppy disc.

Why should have these files been preserved? This is usually one of the first questions. In my view these online publications pictured a developing information industry, in particular of Europe, before internet came onto the scene. IDB Online was a monitor for the computer industry in Europe and could give insight how companies came about and computing was promoted throughout Europe. And the Online Chronicle presented articles about the young European online information industry before the word internet came into fashion.

Sample list of 30 European News headlines of articles for the Online Chronicle (Dialog File 170)  from 1982 till 1988 by Jak Boumans on a Superbrain PC (see photograph above)

Jr   Titel

1988 Agricultiural Abstracts On CD-ROM

1988 Elsevier Buys TWO U.S. companies
1988 German CD-ROM With Economic Formule
1988 Dutch Magazine Titels On CD-ROM
1988 Book Review – Electronic Publishing, Looking for a Blueprint

1987 Kluwer Announces Merger With Wolters Samsom Group

1987 Hoppenstedt Shows CDROM With Dataware Software

1987 Elsevier Makes Public Bid For Legal Publisher Kluwer

1987 Jim Ducker Leaves One Pergamon Company For Another

1986 10th  International Online Informaton Meeting Held In London

1986 Search Aid & Publications (European) – Business Guide Minitel

1986 Pergamon-Infoline After The Take-Over Of Orbit 

1986 Changes at MEAD Data Central International

1986 Three Scenarios For European Information Industry

1985 Finsbury Data Adds New Database

1985 Belindis Keeps Going
1985 Datasolve To Launch New Database
1985 Belgian Host Euris Stops
1985 Television Channel Used For Business Data Transport
1985 G-Cam Launches French Language Daily Newspaper
1985 Eurolex Sold To Butterworth by Mead Data Central

1985 Finsbury Moves Into The Black Afther 5 Years

1985 Excerpta Medica Ups Prices

1985 CNOL Goes With Data-Star

1984 Prestel Security Breach

1984 French Online Market 1983: FFR 100M

1982 Elsevier-NDU To Start Europe Data

1982 Belgian Host Belindis To Enlarge Capacity
1982 IEPRC To Institute Fellowship

BPN 1222 Pre-internet (8): videotext to conquer the world

Videotex as created by the British Post Office started to promote the system around the world, but it also sparked variations on the system. The rush for a consumer system was on. Although the PC had come to the market being pushed by the company Hewlett & Packard (HP) and by the newcomer Apple, it had not gained speed as a consumer product. So the was still a window for a television oriented text service for residential (left) and professional (right) use.



USA
The British Prestel system was migrated and adopted to the American television system. The American government department of Agriculture and Trade initiated a 16 month long pilot in the state of Kentucky under the name Green Thumb. Another trial, with a different system, was held in the region of Miami by the newspaper conglomerate Knight-Ridder. Both projects were discontinued with the rise of information services like The Source and Compuserve as reason.

Japan
In Japan a trial was started in 1978 with a system, dubbed Captain (Character And pattern Telephone Access Information Work). 1.000 devices, ready to receive text, were handed out. The information was sent out from a central system through the telephone line to the consumer’s device. The television set had a decoder with a memory of 64k. the screen pages existed of only 8 rules with 15 symbols. The Captain system could handle the Roman alphabet as well as the Kanji, Hirangana and Katakana symbol set. The trial involved a daily newspaper.

Canada
In 1979 Canada showed its own videotex system, dubbed Telidon. Over the British Prestel system, the Telidon system had as advantage that it had more graphical opportunities. Instead of a mosaic only having six small squares like in the British Prestel system, the Telidon letters and symbols were made up with points. A car wheels would be less square in Canada than in Britain. The Canadian trial lasted from 1979 till 1982. During the trial 100.000 pages were entered. The trial encompassed ca. 1.000Bell Canada paid the experiment.

The Netherlands
The British videotex system was shown in the Netherlands in 1976 during a conference of cable operators during a secret meeting. By 1978 the Dutch PTT announced that it was going to introduce the Prestel system. The Dutch publisher VNU tried to reach a deal with the Dutch PTT in order to control the consumer and professional market, but the Dutch PTT got out from under this agreement. On August 7, 1980 the Dutch PTT started the videotext service, dubbed Viditel (I see from afar). One year later VNU got its videotext computer, but never was able to make it profitable with professional services. In order to get a better penetration for videotex, VNU started Ditzitel, a project with videotex technology but with cable transmission instead of telephone. Ditzitel never got the technology right, but by the end of the eighties the technology was operationel.

France
France had a different point of departure. The country needed a new telephone network. Plans for this were put on paper in 1975. But it became not only a technical specification of a network, but the paper also contained ideas about information services. The Centre National d’Etudes de Télécommunication (CNET) developed a terminal under the codename TICTAC (Terminal Intégré Comportant un Téléviseur et l’Appel au Clavier), which later on became known as Minitel. In order to stimulate the use, a program for free distribution of 1 million Minitels was set up. But the French PTT also thought about content. It planned to replace the printed regional directories with a total of 34 million telephone numbers by an electronic directory, with the advantages of 24 hours availability and the passing out of the print edition. The electronic directory was launched in 1981.
The French videotext system Télétel became a success. This is often ascribed to the free handing out of the terminals Minitel to stimulate the use of the telephone directory. But not all Minitels were free. The success can rather be attributed to the distributed network organisation, to which information providers could hook up, and the freedom of information providers using the distributed network.
The French Télétel/Minitel became a success with millions of Minitels around. They generated millions of online connected minutes, amongst others with sex messages via the messagerie rose, the pink e-mail service.

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Blog Posting Number: 1222

Tags: videotex, kiosque