Videotex and Teletext

Christopher H. Sterling

For a relatively brief period during the 1970s and into the early 1990s, these twin technologies appeared to offer a viable means of transforming the news (and many other) businesses. Videotex (spelled without the final “t”) worked through cable while teletext used part of the television over-the-air transmission channel. Both services offered access to a digital database of information that could be ordered up—as text and very basic graphics—on a television screen. Save for one exception, however, none of the several technical systems survived long (though the French Minitel operation lasted for about two decades). Today the Internet offers far more breadth and depth of service, is accessed more easily, and is presented in finer graphic form. But the Internet as we know it today did not then exist, and the personal computer was a brand-new and expensive technology. Development of these services began in Britain British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) ...

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