BPN 1740: Videotex: an e-phemeral medium

 Today marks the 38th anniversary of the launch of Dutch videotext service Viditel. This first, public, online information service, the first European follower of the UK service Prestel, was based on the videotex protocol. Looking back, Prestel was passé by 1994 with 90.000 subscribers at its height. The Dutch service Viditel had three successors and its successors and had eventually had a lifespan of 17 years. By 1994 both services were outnumbered by the Internet. Videotex was one of the first victims of the upcoming e-phemeral media trend.

The year 1980 was an important one for e-media in Holland. On April 1^st, 1980, the television text service NOS Teletekst was introduced and grew into a resounding success. Teletext still reaches millions of people in the Netherlands today, as opposed to most services in European countries.

On August 7th, 1980, the Viditel trial was launched by Secretary of State Ms Neelie Kroes. It was the first public online service with 500 subscribers, 150 information providers and 150,000 pages. This videotex service, which ran via the telecom network, grew like the Echternacht procession with two steps back and three forwards, but never became a widely accepted service. 

It soon became clear that the aim had to be a large-scale service, but even the cable experiment South Limburg and the VNU Amsterdam project Ditzitel did not bring about this growth. 

 

By refocusing on the French kiosque model and its marketing approach, Videotex Netherlands allowed the users' market to grow in its third attempt to introduce videotex. But also this attempt did not lead to the projected market size of 500,000 consumers and 220,000 small business users. From 1994 on, videotex was gradually overshadowed by the Internet. On 1 January 1997 videotex definitely disappeared from the Dutch online scene.

 

(The illustrations are part of Collection Jak Boumans) 

See also

- video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/wg74YRcv4Tc (commentary in Dutch language)
 

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

BPN 1221 Pre-internet (7): Videotex, tree content

Videotex content
Videotex differs from ASCII in presentation and linking. Videotex is a presentation protocol and not a communication protocol like ASCII. While in ASCII the rules fill the screen from the top, videotex presents the information as a page. All those pages are like a mobile artwork from the ceiling, but a mobile with nine levels. The top two levels (0 to 9 and 01 to 99) were destined for system activities. The third level (001 to 999) was intended for starting pages. An information provider could use six levels to distribute his/her information. Every page could expanded with add-on pages from a to z. Via a tree menu one could search for information and by keying in page numbers one could reach a page directly; in this way it was possible to use the system for timely information by keying in a date like 800915 (15 September 1980). In this way it was also possible to search sideways. Searching like in ASCII databases by keywords was not possible, unless the information provider put up a list of controlled keywords as links.

Illustration of tree structured pages:
- top two systems levels;
- level three is starting page;
- information pages;
- add-on pages.

Every page had 24 rules of 40 positions (letters, figures, symbols and diacritical signs). Every position was built up in a small mosaic of sic squares, which could be used to produce rudimentary graphical representations such as cars (with square wheels). Text as well as graphical representations could be embellished with one of seven colours (white, black, green, blue, red, yellow, magenta).

The page orientation entailed consequences for the writing of content. The author was limited in text by the space of a page and always had to think about navigation. Every page needed links to go back to the level above or to the starting page as well as the exit page (which was hardly used), but there was also a need to lead the user in the navigation from top to bottom, from the bottom pages up as well as sideways by using index pages (see illustration).

Videotex was seen as a consumer information system. The first British Prestel system contained 16 sections:

Buying a Car------Financial Information
An Evening Out -- Market Intelligence
Houses for Sale---Business Intelligence
Local Information-Community Services
Social Guidance---Route Planning
Looking for a Job-Holiday Information
Entertainment-----News
Education---------Sports Results

Source: The Viewdata Revolution by Sam Fedida and Rex Malik; Associated Business Press, 1979

Organisation
The organisation of the videotext service was similar to the ASCII database service, except that the videotext services in the eighties were claimed by the national mail and telephone services as an extra service and source of revenues. In the UK the British post office claimed the service, in The Netherlands the Dutch PTT, in West-Germany the Bundespost and in France the French PTT.
But soon there came a difference between the organisation of the service following the British Prestel model and the French kiosque model. In the Prestel model the PTT controlled the system, did the marketing and publicity and handled the revenues on behalf of the information providers. The PTTs even got involved, for the first time, in content for the first time by claiming the common index and keyword maintenance.
The French PTT was less in control and left the content business to the information providers and publishers. The French PTT was involved with maintaining the system and the network as well as handling the revenues. But the information provider and publishers were more independent in setting up their services, including the technical side. They could link their own computer to the central computers and use the service like a newspaper kiosque, promoting their own products. This has been a key success factor in the promotion of the French Teletel project.

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Blog Posting Number: 1121

Tags: videotex, kiosque