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Viewtron
Viewtron was an online service offered by Knight-Ridder and AT&T from 1983 to 1986. Patterned after the British Post Office's Prestel system, it started as a videotex service requiring users to have a special terminal, the AT&T Sceptre. As home computers became important in the marketplace, the development focus shifted to IBM, Apple, Commodore and other personal computers. Viewtron differed from contemporary services like CompuServe and The Source by emphasizing news from The Miami Herald and Associated Press and e-commerce services from JCPenney and other merchants over computer-oriented services such as file downloads or online chat. Intended to be "the McDonald's of videotex," Viewtron was specifically targeted toward users who would be apprehensive about using a computer. Viewtron also offered airline schedules from the Official Airline Guide (OAG), real estate research from Century 21, e-cards from Hallmark, product information from Consumer Reports, educational s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viewtron JC Penney Catalog Screen
Viewtron was an online service offered by Knight Ridder, Knight-Ridder and AT&T Corporation, AT&T from 1983 to 1986. Patterned after the Post Office Telecommunications, British Post Office's Prestel system, it started as a videotex service requiring users to have a special terminal, the AT&T Sceptre. As home computers became important in the marketplace, the development focus shifted to IBM, Apple Inc., Apple, Commodore International, Commodore and other personal computers. Viewtron differed from contemporary services like CompuServe and The Source (online service), The Source by emphasizing news from The Miami Herald and Associated Press and e-commerce services from J. C. Penney, JCPenney and other merchants over computer-oriented services such as file downloads or online chat. Intended to be "the McDonald's of videotex," Viewtron was specifically targeted toward users who would be apprehensive about using a computer. Viewtron also offered airline schedules from the Official ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viewtron Consumer Reports Screen
Viewtron was an online service offered by Knight-Ridder and AT&T from 1983 to 1986. Patterned after the British Post Office's Prestel system, it started as a videotex service requiring users to have a special terminal, the AT&T Sceptre. As home computers became important in the marketplace, the development focus shifted to IBM, Apple, Commodore and other personal computers. Viewtron differed from contemporary services like CompuServe and The Source by emphasizing news from The Miami Herald and Associated Press and e-commerce services from JCPenney and other merchants over computer-oriented services such as file downloads or online chat. Intended to be "the McDonald's of videotex," Viewtron was specifically targeted toward users who would be apprehensive about using a computer. Viewtron also offered airline schedules from the Official Airline Guide (OAG), real estate research from Century 21, e-cards from Hallmark, product information from Consumer Reports, educational so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AT&T Sceptre
The AT&T Sceptre was a graphical terminal launched by AT&T in October 1983, used for the two largest deployments of videotex in the United States: Knight Ridder's Viewtron service in Florida, and the Los Angeles Times' Gateway service in Southern California.David NeedleBell announces videotex terminal ''InfoWorld'', 18 July 1983, pp.1 and 4–5 The Sceptre was the basic bit of home kit needed for the services, to paint NAPLPS-standard geometrically-specified pages to the screen. The set top unit came with a separate battery-powered infrared wireless keyboard and an integrated 1200/75 baud 7-bit modem, and used a domestic television set for display. Internally it was based on an Intel 8088 processor, the same as used in the original IBM PC, with 127K ROM and 48K RAM, and display circuitry based on a 6845 CRTC. These provided a high resolution raster display, in 16 colors chosen from a palette of 256–more than supported by most home computers of the time. However, unlike tho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NAPLPS
NAPLPS (North American Presentation Layer Protocol Syntax) is a Vector graphics markup language, graphics language for use originally with videotex and teletext services. NAPLPS was developed from the Telidon system developed in Canada, with a small number of additions from AT&T Corporation. The basics of NAPLPS were later used as the basis for several other Micro Computer Machines, microcomputer-based graphics systems. History The Canadian Communications Research Centre (CRC), based in Ottawa, had been working on various graphics systems since the late 1960s, much of it led by Herb Bown. Through the 1970s they turned their attention to building out a system of "picture description instructions", which encoded graphics commands as a text stream. Graphics were encoded as a series of instructions (graphics primitives) each represented by a single ASCII character. Graphic coordinates were encoded in multiple 6-bit strings of XY coordinate data, flagged to place them in the prin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knight Ridder
Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. It was bought by McClatchy on June 27, 2006, allowing the latter to become the second largest newspaper publisher in the United States at the time, with 32 daily newspaper brands sold. Its headquarters were located in San Jose, California. History Origins The corporate ancestors of Knight Ridder were Knight Newspapers, Inc. and Ridder Publications, Inc. The first company was founded by John S. Knight upon inheriting control of the '' Akron Beacon Journal'' from his father, Charles Landon Knight, in 1933; the second company was founded by Herman Ridder when he acquired the , a German language newspaper, in 1892. As anti-German sentiment increased in the interwar period, Ridder successfully transitioned into English language publishing by acquiring '' The Journal of Commerce'' in 1926. Both companies went public in 1969 and merged on July 11, 1974. For a brief time, the combined co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Videotex
Videotex (or interactive videotex) was one of the earliest implementations of an end-user information system. From the late 1970s to early 2010s, it was used to deliver information (usually pages of text) to a user in computer-like format, typically to be displayed on a television or a dumb terminal. In a strict definition, videotex is any system that provides interactive content and displays it on a video monitor such as a television, typically using modems to send data in both directions. A close relative is teletext, which sends data in one direction only, typically encoded in a television signal. All such systems are occasionally referred to as ''viewdata''. Unlike the modern Internet, traditional videotex services were highly centralized. Videotex in its broader definition can be used to refer to any such service, including teletext, the Internet, bulletin board systems, online service providers, and even the arrival/departure displays at an airport. This usage is no longe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prestel
Prestel was the Brand#Brand names and trademark, brand name of a videotex service launched in the UK in 1979 by BT Group#Post Office Telecommunications, Post Office Telecommunications, a division of the British Post Office Limited#History, Post Office. It had around 95,500 attached terminals at its peak, and was a forerunner of the internet-based online services developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Prestel was discontinued in 1994 and its assets sold by BT Group, British Telecom to a company consortium. A subscriber to Prestel used an adapted TV set with a keypad or keyboard, a dedicated terminal, or a microcomputer to interact with a central database via an ordinary Telephone line, phoneline. Prestel offered hundreds of thousands of pages of general and specialised information, ranging from consumer advice to financial data, as well as services such as home banking, online shopping, travel booking, telesoftware, and messaging. In September 1982, to mark I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Official Airline Guide
OAG is a global travel data provider with headquarters in the UK. The company was founded in 1929 and operates in the United States, Singapore, Japan, Lithuania and China. It has a large network of flight information data including schedules, flight status, connection times, and industry references such as airport codes. Early history The "Official Aviation Guide of the Airways" was first published in February 1929 in the United States, listing 35 airlines offering a total of 300 flights. After the Guide was taken over by a rival publication in 1948, the September issue carried the OAG title for the first time. OAG was founded in Chicago, but moved to the suburb of Oak Brook, Illinois, in 1968. The "ABC World Airways Guide" containing maps and tips for travellers was first published in the UK in 1946. The integration of the ABC and OAG brands occurred following the acquisition of OAG Inc. in 1993 by Reed Elsevier which already owned ABC International. OAG had acquired SRDS, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Online Service
An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, social media, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup. In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such as bulletin board systems, downloadable files and programs, news articles, chat rooms, and electronic mail services. The term "online service" was also used in references to these dial-up services. The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
