The term telesoftware was coined by W.J.G. Overington who invented the concept in 1974; it literally means “software at a distance” and it often refers to the transmission of programs for a microprocessor or
home computer via broadcast
teletext
A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories
Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...
, though the use of teletext was just a convenient way to implement the invention, which had been invented as a theoretical broadcasting concept previously. The concept being of producing local interactivity without the need for a return information link to a central computer. The invention arose as spin-off from research on function generators for a hybrid computer system for use in simulation of heat transfer in food preservation, and thus from outside of the broadcasting research establishments.
Software bytes are presented to a terminal as pairs of standard teletext characters, thus utilizing an existing and well-proven broadcasting system.
History
Telesoftware was pioneered in the
UK during the 1970s and 1980s, and a paper on the subject was presented by R.H. Vivian (IBA) and W.J.G. Overington at the 1978
International Broadcasting Convention
International Broadcasting Convention, more commonly known by its initials IBC, is an annual trade show, held in September at the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. IBC's tagline is “By the industry. For the ...
.
The world first test broadcast took place on ITV Oracle in February 1977, though there was no equipment available to use the software at that time. The broadcast simply produced a display of the encoded software, for a Signetics 2650 microprocessor, on a teletext television. However, the fact that the broadcast took place gave the concept practical credibility of something that was realistically possible for the future.
At the 1978 International Broadcasting Convention a demonstration of telesoftware working from a live feed of ITV Oracle teletext was presented on an exhibition stand by Mr Hedger. The Oracle signal being carried within the ITV signal. At one stage the ITV signal was routed via a communication satellite as part of a television demonstration, and the opportunity was used to test telesoftware using that signal that had been routed via the communication satellite, and it worked well.
Also, a display maquette, with the title Telesoftware Tennis had been broadcast live for a few minutes on ITV Oracle in November or December 1976. Although that was just during a discussion of the future possibilities for telesoftware, the development in the 21st century of retrieving teletext pages from super-VHS recordings means that if anyone was recording the ITV television broadcast on super-VHS videotape at that time, then that maquette page could potentially be recovered from the tape by teletext archaeologists, as potentially could the broadcasts from 1977 mentioned above and the broadcasts made in 1978 at the time of the International Broadcasting Convention. Such technique has already been used to recover and archive telesoftware broadcasts made in the 1980s by the BBC.
During that time, software was broadcast at various times on all of the (then) four terrestrial
TV channels. Telesoftware and tutorials were available on
Ceefax
Ceefax (, punning on "seeing facts") was the world's first teletext information service and a forerunner to the current BBC Red Button service. Ceefax was started by the BBC in 1974 and ended, after 38 years of broadcasting, at 23:32:19 BST ( ...
(
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
between 1983 and 1989 and was generally transmitted for a period of one week. The BBC Ceefax Telesoftware service was managed by Jeremy Brayshaw. Most of the Telesoftware programming tutorials were written by Gordon Horsington
and they, as well as most of the software, are still available from the online Telesoftware archives (see the external links below). Gathering of the software (often referred to as "downloading", though, as there was no uplink request needed nor used, not really "downloading" as such) could take place from Friday evening to the following Thursday evening. As the updating took place on a Friday, it was advised not to attempt to gather the software between 9am and 7pm on Fridays.
Other channels provided for several other computers via a range of adapters and set-top boxes. The same delivery system was also used to deliver satellite weather images from the
satellite for download.
systems.
Various archives of BBC Ceefax Telesoftware are preserved on the internet.