Tate and Teletext

Let me recommend Thursday afternoon in November as a good time to visit Tate Britain - very interested to see the somewhat like  (and pleasant ) Mondrian works of Marlow Moss - fascinating story too, sounds something like the Quaint Irene  of E.F. Benson's Mapp books.

Okay across the bridge to the DTG

Also great to find another challenging photographer in the shape of the American Karen Knorr who dissects class issues as only a non- Brit can.

Tate Britain- Lovely at night (and day)

After a quick rush around  I went to an evening  'techie' event which was  a presentation on what is a potentially interesting topic for the technological 'digerati' The History of Teletext given by Peter Weitzel.

The talk under the auspices of the UK branch of SMPTE was held at DTG offices on the Albert Embankment bang next to MI6 offices - well we had what was very much a technical view of the evolution but perhaps it would have been nice to consider how it met people's needs and was in fact the first mass digital product to make it into our living rooms.

Here's a quirky historic clip aimed at a US audience.

What's the secret organisation next door
(actually it's DTG)

It was revealed that the BBC was obliged to see bits of the vertical blanking to companies like Coral who used it to help them run their betting  business- at that time chiefly horse racing.

 

Some interesting points like the fact that it was the major method for booking holidays in the 90's and the overpayment for the 'franchise' was what scuppered commercial TV's involvement and perhaps the development would have gone somewhat differently if ITV had remained involved in their part of the service?

Ebay deliveries 

Interesting that Ebay is now able to deliver free of charge to Argos shops - I've ordered some rather excellent iHip headphones (3 pairs) and have collected  at my local shop all they  needed to do was scan the code that was sent to me- another example of useful technology