I received an e-mail from a kind fellow (thanks Darren!) the other day letting me know that the BBC Domesday Project was now available for viewing online, which got me quite excited since I had always wanted to have a play with it, but never had the opportunity.
What am I wittering on about? Well, the BBC Domesday Project was, at the time, a major endeavour by the Beeb to create a historical record of what life was like in the UK in 1986. The idea and name of the project came from the famous Domesday Book which had been compiled under order of William the Conqueror back in 1086 to show which landowners owned what (and therefore how much tax they needed to pay!).
Of course, the first thing I did was head over to Domesday Reloaded and look up my home town, and was surprised to find quite a bit of info on there, including a picture of a road not that far from me, and a piece of credit text saying that two of the primary schools that are within walking distance of my house contributed to the project. I wish my school had taken part…
The Domesday Project hardware was quite an advanced bit of technology for the time. The pictures and words detailing most of the towns and cities in the UK were stored on a special Laserdisc, which was connected to a BBC Micro and a trackball. The computer and trackball allowed the data to be accessed simply and easily, the idea being that this would be a great resource for schools and libraries. The data itself came from a variety of sources, but much of it was supplied by school children and other volunteers.
Unfortunately the cost of all this was too high for most schools, so ultimately not as many people saw the benefit of it as the creators would have liked. I certainly would have loved to have had a go on it, but sadly I never came across the system anywhere.