RETRO TECH
BBC CEEFAX
10 things you never knew about...
Clunky and slow, with pixelated graphics that look pretty comical these days, Ceefax offered just 30 pages of information when it was launched by the BBC on 23 September 1974 – a time when only 6,000 TV sets could receive it. But, as Ceefax grew, it became loved by millions, before closing down in 2012. Now, 50 years on from its accidental birth, we remember this iconic slice of British culture
by BENJIE GOODHART
1Ceefax wasn’t the BBC’s first experiment with a written-word news service. During the 1960s, the corporation tested something called Beebfax, an initiative where a newspaper was sent to printers in people’s homes every morning. In the end, however, the printers were thought too noisy, and Beebfax was shelved.
2The service came about by mistake. BBC engineers Geoff Larkby and Barry Pyatt were investigating means to transmit subtitles for deaf viewers and discovered the standard 625-line TV picture had ‘spare’ lines at the top to transmit code that could be turned into text. The technology was subsequently rolled out across the world.