Thursday, January 29, 2009

Early Internet: A 1981 TV report on 'telepapers'

Imagine sitting down at home with your morning coffee, then turning on your computer to read the day's newspaper. "It's not as far-fetched as it may seem,'' San Francisco TV station KRON reported in 1981.



"This is only the first step in newspapers by computer,'' correspondent Steve Newman told viewers. "Engineers now predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer. But that's a few years off."

There were 2,000 to 3,000 San Francisco area homes with computers at the time. The experimental network linked nine "telepapers'' to a database housed in Columbus, Ohio. Readers like way-early adopter Richard Halloran of San Francisco could access text, but no photographs, comics or -- significantly -- advertisements.

The participating papers were the two in San Francisco, the Examiner and the Chronicle, plus The New York Times, The Columbus Dispatch, The New York Times, The Virginian-Pilot, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Related: More video favorites on Gannett Blog's YouTube channel

Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.

8 comments:

  1. Wait a minute. Only 2,000-3,000 home computer users in the *Bay Area* in 1981? In the *Bay Area*?

    ReplyDelete
  2. "We're not in it to make money ... we're not going to lose a lot, but we're not going to make a lot."

    Funny how some things don't change, eh?

    ReplyDelete
  3. How time flies.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's sad, Gannett had 28 years to prepare for the future; goes to show you the old management did not change with the times, nor did they care.

    ReplyDelete
  5. 2:43: I'll double-check, but I believe that's what the KRON story says.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I first got online in 1983. Trust me, hardly anyone got online then -- although you could find news wires and a very small handful of newspaper stories at places like the online service CompuServe.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Our cable company/I-provider announced price raises coming in March. What are all these papers going to do when people can't afford to be online? I know of a handful of people going to drop I-net service so they can still get cable. I dropped it myself for a couple of months when times got tough. Just wondering what the higher ups think of this, if anything.

    ReplyDelete
  8. 11:54 AM:

    Who keeps cable instead of internet? I can get the things I want (Daily Show, on-demand, TV) online without that costly, lots-of-unwatched-channels cable tv subscription.

    ReplyDelete

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.