 This is going to be completely made up as I go along. Because I had a PowerPoint presentation. I hate PowerPoint, but I had this wonderful PowerPoint presentation which explains the history of the BBC's Computer Literacy project in the 1980s and why we did it and so on and so forth, and I was going to use this thing here, which we'll see in a minute, just to illustrate it to play clips of video. But the USB stick that I had my PowerPoint on, it's just failed. Criwch ddweud â'r bod gennym ni'n argymellio cweliadau a dwi'n cael ei ddweud. Ond mae'n cweliadau. Mae'n ddweud y dyfodol yn ymddangos, ac Patrick Titley, o'r argymellio'r oedd hynny'n gweithio. Mae'n ddweud yn gwneud ei wneud i'r reisio'r ysgreidio mewn cyfnod, ac yn ymddangos, rydych chi'n credu i gyddiad y mashein. ac rwy'n rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio ymlaen i gweithio'r ffordd y ffordd i gweithio'r pethau'n gweithio'r ffordd i gweithio'r ffordd i gweithio'r ffordd i gweithio'r ffordd i gweithio'r bwysig. Yn gyfrifasol gyda'r mewn gwahanol, Alex Krtofsky, rwy'n gweithio'n golygu'r radio 4'r ysgol yma, gallwn i'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio ysgol Llywodraeth i gyrfa cymaint, o'r ddod, o'r ffordd, o'r gweithio cyfnodd, a hefyd yn ystod o'r cyfnodd, i'n rhan o'r cyfnodd, o'r malwyr, ac rhan o'r cyfnodd, ac mae'n ddod o'r cyfnodd, o'r virus, o'r wyf, o'r cyfnodd, o'r cyfnodd, o'r cyfnodd, o'r cyfnodd, o'r cyfnodd, o'r cyfnodd, o'r cyfnodd, o'r cymryngau cyécoleu. Mae Anci Men! â dispar 편 cymryf wysigeonwyr. A hynny yw'r amser rhan o'r a daughtersiaid ac, hiogdoach, oherwydd yne'r rheaniaidd digïn密, sydd ydych yn ei wneud y parwg ddiddordeb ar y cyfrifio'r arddangos. Rydyn ni'n amlwg rawr Patrick a ddim yn ei gydig. Rydym yn y pethau y bwysig Fynghwydol BBC Llytrosi, a rydyn ni'n bwysig o'r bydau o'r ffyrdd nesaffyrdd. Mae'r cyfrifio'r bydau'u sy'n gweithio ar y gyfer yma. y version of the what's called the clap database computer literacy archive project. So we've put all the programs, that's not its official title, it's unofficial. All the programs are on there. There are 2,000 video clips from 150 programs. Each clip is described. You've got the radio times billings for the programs. You've got items down the side which are playing, and you can play the programs in the windows, and it's taken a huge amount of effort, and it's all been done by ex-members of the production team, and we're about to show it to Tony Hall because it's been done under the radar. So you're the first people to see this, this is a world launch. Can we launch that program? Well it should run on. Oh, all right, well that's a very good start. Let's go to, yeah, it will run on, but I can't remember how you make it run on. Just click the play button I spread. Now this was a program that went out on a Sunday morning. We took over the whole of Sunday morning on BBC One, because in those days BBC education could do that. Just keep pressing play, I think it should just go on. Usually it did, and even the slightest slip lets us some form of chaos. Anyone who's used a micro knows really that this is true. So today we're showing reality, walks and all. Secondly, over 300,000 people wrote letters to the project asking for advice. Today there's a unique chance that coders, tech freaks, and even ordinary nice people ask questions to our specialist software, hardware, and telecommunications right here in the studio. If you have a question, ring 01811835. Yeah, right. We thought it might be a lot of fun. John College with us again. Let's stop it there and go to the next time. Now he mentions it's a lot of fun. Paddy and I really did it because it was a lot of fun. But I do have this waking dream of coming up to the live transmission of a microlife programme and not having rehearsed it. And I feel a bit like that now. So put up with me with some care please. Now the thing that Alex Krotowski's programme played was a little bit of the very famous hacking sequence. And I'm going to show you that because you may have heard it. It's been on the radio several times lately. But you've probably never actually seen what actually happened. And it's quite interesting when you analyse it. John Cole tries to demonstrate in telecom gold and electronic mail, which of course was a new thing in those days. And he uses the telephone to dial an ordinary local number and can't get through. And then he results to a packet switched system. And then of course you get the famous hackers incident. Let's see if it works. What's the code John? It's a telephone line to the computer. You have to get one or two things. Either an acoustic coupler or a modem. It's quite a nice acoustic coupler. Let me done this. Can you go to the home page? It's the little owl at the top left. And then I'll talk you through it. I was using one of these in New York when I was over there. I could go to a local phone and put in 10 cents to get me through through a satellite into the UK to breach telecom gold. And I'd already typed into the micro some messages I want to send. I'd shoot them through at any time that they don't know how to do it. And then of course I could read the reply as they came through some nice little system. It's very useful. But let's try going in now, dialing the telephone using this modem here and getting straight in. So we dial nine from outside line and then eight, three, seven, two, eight, four, four. And we'll see if that will ring out. I have a nasty feeling that we're going to have a few problems this morning. Partially because I think we're going to have a lot of lines busy. I don't know whether we'll get through on this number. It's ringing. We'll see. And it's still ringing. And if a hundred other people are also trying to ring in, we may not get in on this line. But if not, we'll go around a different way. Right. I'm not going to get in that way. So I'm going to have to go in. I'm afraid through a packet switch system. I'm afraid of that. Nine, eight, seven, five, three, six, one, three, one. Now, will you explain what a packet switch system is? Well, all right. It's just another route going through another network. And unfortunately, it's a little more difficult going this way. And we hope we'll be able to get in the direct one. But it's another route through a national network into this London computer. I just hope few people are going that way. Right. That's whistling. And let's now wake up the packet switch exchange. There he is. And come on. Right. And now it wants to know who I am. So this is the code to get in here. TL, type that wrong. Gold. And it didn't take. Because I made this typing mistake. I do hope the cameras aren't on the keyboard. Right. Now it wants to know the address of the computer we want to get to. Well, I'm trying to get the one we were getting to. That was a secret little piece of code you put in there. Right. Now we are now at last through to this London computer. And that is where I'm trying to get to by direct dialing. Right. British Telecom Gold, we're through. We now have to type in our identification, which we said our ID was owl 001. And machine asks what our password is. So no cameras on the keyboard, please. The password is that. And Telecom Gold will make off services where it's written on the keyboard. The password is that. And Telecom Gold will make off services where it's written on the keyboard. So Telecom Gold will make off services where it's written on the keyboard. MailCourt. Ha ha, computer security. I think you can. I think you can. Hackers on. I think you can. I think you can. I think you can. I think you can. I think you can. I think you can. First of all... It's real fun. It's just the same as hacking, hacking, hacking.ücken rear's tasted one nine. Just go away. You want to do a demonstration? Right. If they don't exist at anything... Okay. Send ... Right. Now let me just explain that programme was done Mae'r cyfnod ydydd iawn i'r cyfle cyffredinol wedi'i gweld ar y gyrsgwyr, ac mae'r cyfnod ddod yn dweud y newydd, ac mae'n ddweud y newydd am ddod, mae'n ddod yn ddod 300 lefyrs, mae'n ddod yn helpu, ac mae'n ddod y sydd y newydd yw ddod. 것dor â'r cyfrifiad o fforddol. Felly mae wedi cyfrifiadhau bbc. Efallai eich rhanig fyddeithasol, gyda lluniau a Llethau. Nid oedd, iddynt! Rydym yn cael ei fluganiaeth eich bbc yn cael ei wneud. Os y mynd i dda, maelodau rhanig bbc y bydd trwy'n cael ei wneud. Wydden ni'n bwysig â'r bwysig o wneud y bwysig mai'r gofynig a phoblu arno gymryd gan 85% o bwysig ysgol i'r bwysig? Mae'r hirach eich bwysig, a 65% o bwysig ysgol i'r bwysig a yw'r bwysig ysgol i'r bwysig? Mae 65% o bwysig ysgol i'r bwysig. Mae hwn wedi ddysgu angen i'r bwysig ysgol i'r byw sy'n gwybod o'r hynny i ddim yn fawr. a phobliw Nighter talked about it entirely because Keniff Baker had persuaded Margaret Thatcher that she wanted some quick wins and this was a quick win for her. The course that was associated with writing programmes for the computer, it was called a 100-hour basic, and this was run in conjunction with the project by the National Extension College 300,000 clywbeth a'r cwm yn gallu'r ardal. Byddai yma ar gyfer perthyni ar ôl o roi'r oedd, ac mae'n ardal eich cwm yn lluqaf gael byddai CBC sy'n cyflwyddor cyhoedd y tyf connectingol ar ychydig. Mae gweithio gallwch unig wych, ym mhwysigh. Mae'r gwirionedd yw'r cwm tru cael ei gwirioneddau was absolutely rocketing upwards. We were getting two or three million people watching each programme, and the programme was out two or three times a week. And the reach, I forget what the reach was, but the reach for the audience was really quite enormous. The interesting thing was that as we did the programmes, the first series was more general, and it actually didn't coincide at the very beginning with the existence of the BBC Micro, which was late being delivered. It appeared eventually, although I think there were people under the table making it work in quotes. But the computer was seen as an essential part of the project. The second series that we did, which was much more about how you actually do coding, was more demanding, but actually got a bigger audience. So there was a huge increase at that time. The crucial thing about the whole project is its timing. I want to go back in time now to explain how the project began and why it began. Can you find... This is where you have to go back. You can see the outline. The thing is you can choose to search by series, by themes through a timeline, which shows you what was going on in the BBC project, along with what was happening with the wider computer world. There's the history of the project there, which we'll have a look at in a minute. And also, crucially, with this, you can run BBC software through an emulator. You can run the BBC software that we use in the television programmes to illustrate principles. And we'll try and see if that can work later. We've got a problem here because the search box in that corner, when you search by that, comes up with an error. At least I think it does. Could you go to series and go right down to the bottom? These are the series we did. You see, from 1987, sorry, 1978, right through to 1987, we did a whole series of series. And could you go down to related programmes? And then, at the top, you'll see the horizon. Now, the chips are down. Now, that horizon programme was very important. If we can get it to the point on the timeline. Just from the beginning? No, from, remember what we said was... Oh. Yeah, only so many minutes in. Right. This was back in 1978. And horizon did a programme. We were hoping to find the appropriate bit of it. Sorry, we hadn't had time to rehearse this. But it's about 50... Was it? Yeah, it's okay. This was a programme that looked at the world of microprocessor. And the fact that British industry was not doing anything to make use of microprocessors, it was really not taking very much, paying very much attention to the new technology generally. The microelectronics revolution is, of course, it was being called in those days, whereas other countries were kind of running away with it. And it ended with this comment about the government and the fact that the government was doing nothing at all to promote the microelectronics revolution. I don't know if we can come in. Just come in about there. Being market, just for trade. Some people believe that we must change from hardware to software. That we should take our future upon the chips, not by making them, but by programming them. And that we should use our software skills to develop high technology industries around them. We are in a time of great innovation opportunity. And this is the great strength of the British. Time and time again, we have dead the word in innovation and invention. I think we've absolutely got this opportunity at the moment. I think we ought to regard the micro-processor and everything that goes with it, as not an industry in itself, as far as we are concerned, but the raw material for the industry. We can buy a processor. But it's not actually nothing. Effectively, it's nothing. Five dollars. The actual product at the end of the day that might be a word processing device of automatic typing system, some automatic learning or teaching machine, some trading system for a banker, can be, shall we say, 5,000 pounds, or 5,000 dollars. You're looking to 1,000 to 1,000 multiply in terms of the difference between the processor cost and finally what you can sell it. We're going to find all sorts of new ideas sprouting forth. And we do want to be able to attack them off, to be able to give somebody with a good, if you like, lateral thinking idea of applying a micro-processor in an entirely new sort of way. Give them the opportunity of building on that, exploiting it, producing a world-beating product from it, marketing that product, and reaping the rewards from it. The example of industry creation that everyone quotes is the EMI body scanner. An extra camera rotates around the patient's body, taking various pictures from different angles. All the pictures are fed into a computer, which combines them into a single view, as if you would see a section cut cleanly across the body, a view in which you can see the backbone, the muscles, and everything. What do the EMI have that girls don't have? They have software in the widest sense. They have a piece of applied mathematics that enables them to process the information, do this on computers, and to create the image. That is what they have. The heart of it is software, and that, immediately in a short time, leads to an industry recreation. An idea that didn't exist five years ago has now sold £200 million worth of equipment. Is our future then the creation of more industries like this? One can hope so, but so far there are no other examples to point to. What will happen then to the men in today's jobs? Can we all live on the wealth of automatic factories and the earnings of an elite band of 60,000 software engineers? It's time to think about the future. The questions are these. In the long term, when the only tentative resource is made with people, is automation the wrong road to take? Could this technology be the end of an age, the end of a line of evolution, and not a beginning? But in the short term, can we afford not to automate? If we don't, can we be disadvantaged by the automated industries abroad? And if we do automate, will we be able to cope with the problems of large-scale unemployment? Perhaps the survival of the nation depends upon its people finding meaningful lives. The questions shout. What is shocking is that the government has been totally unaware of the effects that this technology is going to create. The silence is terrifying. It's time we talked about the future. That's exactly what we're going to try. Okay, and there was a discussion afterwards. Now, the important thing about that programme is that it shook people up, and it was distributed to all members of the cabinet. And the BBC began to think it should be doing something to sort of take note of this, what was happening. We were approached, in BBC Education, we were approached by the Manpower Services Commission, which was a quango whose job was to look at employment futures and so on. And they said that the government really doesn't know what it's doing. Could you do some research for us, which would be independent research, which we could use? And a few of us went to a very large number of countries. I won't list them, but we went to America and Sweden and Holland and France and so on. Looking at what was going on, look at what the industry was doing, what educationists were saying, at what unionists were saying about the job prospects. And the Germans were calling the chip the job killer, remember? Okay, so it was considered very important that something should be done, and we were given the chance within the BBC to see what the BBC should be doing to meet the challenge of this. And we started looking around. Now there were home computers, a few of them, very expensive ones, the TRS80 and so on and so forth. You could buy kits of computer parts if you went down the edge of a road and you could sold them together and make something that probably wouldn't work. And there was very little around, but there were a number of companies beginning to produce machines. They were all basically programming in basic. Let's face that. And so computer literacy was beginning to become equated with writing programmes in basic. And George Osborne, just a few years ago, said that he learnt all that he knew about computing, which is probably not very much, through using a BBC microcomputer to learn to write programmes in basic. And the great philosophical idea was that this computer is coming along, it's going to dominate our lives in all kinds of ways. We must be able to dominate it. So in other words, it must necessarily not be a black box, it must be something that we learn to control ourselves. And so the hands-on philosophy became very important. So we had an approach to this, which was, let's write, let's make some television programmes which show people how to use the computer for a whole range of things. And then we started looking at what computers there were, and they all spoke different dialects of basic. There were none of them very good structured basics. We had the advice of some people, some experts on what a good structured basic would be. We produced a thing called adopted basic for computers, which was a structured basic, which we thought we could build into a television series of some kind. In those days you could do didactic television series, remember? We had a meeting in London with all the producer, all the computer companies that we could find and we said, could you adopt this on your machines? And they said, well, only if the government pay for the ROMs that you plug in. And the government basically said, no, we're not doing that. And the computer companies went away saying on your bike. So we were left with the problem, what on earth do we do? And in the end, it takes a very long time to explain why it was and it just so happens at this moment in history when there wasn't the right sort of machine, we decided we needed a machine of our own. We tried to go with a company that was publicly funded through the National Research and Development Council called Newbury, the new brain. I don't know if anyone's heard of the new brain. It failed and then in desperation we produced a specification which we sent out to all the British computer companies. We didn't have to compete outside. We weren't in Europe at that stage. And the number of companies said what they had in the pipeline. We looked at those companies, we looked at what they had and as you know the story is that Acorn won the contract and we then started producing programmes built around the computer which we had control of and it was specially designed to interact with the you saw the computer screen there it was a very clear image because it was built along with a lot of advice from BBC R&D, BBC Engineering took a huge interest in the design of the machine. They also had a tele-text decoder which could take tele-software distributed through the Cfax lines and so you could download software overnight and run it in the machines and so forth. So it was a very integrated system and it was extremely successful the project was very successful although a lot of people didn't approve of it of course. Now I'd like you to see if you can find if you've got to computers in control programme 3 or just computers in control programme 3 is called making things move and somewhere around there you'll find one of those shows John Cole with no, it's not Binky Binky was a robot it shows let me just see it's just after that I think, going down a bit further well he's showing show the Ferris wheel there we are the thing is our search thing doesn't work it just comes up with a load of error messages at the moment which is unfortunate yep now we've got another marking points on here on each strut we put a reflective strip and a sensor here so that sensor connected to the computer can tell the computer where one of these struts is going past the sensor so you know when a cage is going past but you wouldn't know that sort of much one no, you've got another set of sensors to mark in some way a cage number one and in fact this is cage number one or car number one another reflective strip and another sensor down here which is able to determine when that particular cage goes past so that we know where a cage is after which the other sensor can keep count of those things now at the moment the computer doesn't know where it is if you rotate that slowly it will suddenly sense when it gets the cage one there it goes and from then on it can keep control or keep count of the counts as they go past now if I turn the power on we can make the computer drive that and of course we could use the computer to stop the DC motor when a particular cage got to the bottom so if I can find the right button to push there we are it will offer me the ability to stop a particular cage now which one would you like? stop the cage number four so if I push it now it's waiting for number four to come up and there it is but the stopper there you can see that you could do something fairly didactic in those days earlier on in the programme we can't show you the clips that I planned because when we try searching for them through the top we get this huge error message so you just have to get a feel for this this is a piece of software we hope to make available more generally at the moment it's sort of sub-judice within the BBC because there are all sorts of copyright issues theoretically about things like I know you can find virtually all these programmes probably on the internet but nonetheless if the BBC starts producing them in a form like this that's a bit like the iPlayer and so on all sorts of questions can be asked so we've got to sort of go through all the hoops of trying to get it approved and so on and so forth and see what it would cost to do but you can see that this is this chronicles the whole of a decade of computer development and if you go to a thing like the National Museum of Computing and you see a computer of that period in a glass case it doesn't mean very much but when you see it actually on the day it was on the streets it brings the whole thing alive and I think you may find this very very interesting and very useful I'm sorry this has been a bit sort of random but I think it shows basically what we did it's very important the business of telesoftware was very important for the BBC because it developed into a data service eventually people like bookmakers were getting live information sent through the CFAQs information downloaded through the decoders and then they could see the results of races sort of straight away and things like that it got it got rather lost its original purpose which was for downloading educational software but what it did for the BBC was it gave them a start in the whole business of talking to set top boxes and so they had various patents that put them into a very strong position when it came to all that we're used to today when it comes to controlling controlling your computer using a handset and so on so it was very important for them and BBC engineering I hope get a proper mention in the thing here can we just look at the history section have I run out of time do you must keep on I have no idea where we are so if you go to the introduction this is very important photograph these are DTI ministers department of trade and industry ministers sitting in front of the BBC micro in a row there's Norman LeMont there's Kenneth Baker and they're all sitting in front of the of the BBC machine at the launch learning about computer literacy and they're running the welcome tape that was that came with the machine and Patrick Jenkins there this one here there was one program that was typing a whole series of words and it'll press return it puts him into alphabetical order and he was sitting there typing Patrick Aluysus Jenkins secretary of state for industry press return you know it will alphabeticise them and Kenneth Baker as if you go there is another picture of Kenneth Baker lower down saying oh it's a bit like a typewriter isn't it and so on and there you see the ACORN team with us at the launch so the history is all in there as well and there's the it's a bit like a typewriter sorry go a bit further you can see some of the the stuff we did there was the computer book which was a bestseller for three months there was the user guide for the computer itself there was a whole lot of software that was generated at a time when there was almost no application software at all the welcome tape was virtually the first application program which used things like pages you know cycling pages different sizes of type colour and sound very novel and the whole thing was written up and there's a big thing there the computer literacy project written up by John Ratliff who was the executive producer who had to deal with all the politics such as people saying we shouldn't have done it but looking back on it now it's a very interesting part of BBC history there has been nothing really like it until recently when the micro bit was produced and there's been a digital initiative in the BBC which has now stopped because the BBC gets bored with things after a while but if you haven't seen the micro bit this is now going to be distributed two million of these are going to be distributed to school children and if you press a button somewhere you can program it using the USB connector and I don't know why this doesn't work it worked earlier oh there it is so it says hello or something like that and it's got motion detectors and so on but this is being given to two million children and with any luck we'll create a new generation of coders using this possibly as a starting point and my grandson is getting one for his birthday in a week's time ok well they're free well you can buy them but yes I will see you absolutely cheap skate any questions and I'm sorry it's been so rambling well