The first signs of a typewriter / teleprinter morphing into a computer
Saturday, October 24th, 2009

‘Early morning, semi-detached Highgate, London’ The received pronunication voice-over has BBC written all over it and in fact was recorded by the great Derek Cooper of the Food Programme fame. In the late sixties, the web as we know it wasn’t even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, but already the idea of networking was starting to take shape, as this clunky teleprinter was connected to a ‘giant brain’ ten miles away. I remember the teleprinter from the Grandstand football results in the 1970s but had no idea they were quite as noisy. No wonder his wife sent him and his teleprinter to the spare bedroom. Fascinating glimpse too of what must be the first on-line diary held by ‘the brain’.