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Ceefax is 35 Years old today!

first memories (September 2009)

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IS
Inspector Sands

IIRC when you phoned in it asked you 'How do you say one' etc. working through the numbers and commands. It was always a bit hit and miss at the learning, so you were usually better off just pressing the phone key so it learnt the DTMF tone. The learning process also meant you had spent about a pound before you got into the service properly.


That sounds familiar. Remember though that at the time DTMF tones weren't as universal as they are now (most push button phones such as the standard BT ones had tone/pulse switches so even if the phone could produce tones it wasn't necessarily turned on
SD
sda|
sda| posted:
Love Ceefax and it's associates.

I remember on it's last anniversary a man responsible for it was on Breakfast getting slightly angry after Natasha Kaplinsky said it was old fashioned. Clips were shown of the holy grail that is the Angela Rippon fronted 'This Is Ceefax' that I would dearly love to watch in full!


I've uploaded that clip here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiLxaXb2boA - does anyone know if anything was done for this anniversary?
RD
rdd Founding member
Chorus NTL over here in Ireland is still transmitting a full Ceefax service on both BBC1 and BBC2 on both analogue and digital, oddly enough.

Even more oddly enough in the world of teletext is that Skytext (the analogue version!) is still going on Sky News, albeit in a fairly minimal format. Why Sky haven't culled that by now I don't know.
GU
Gusan
Natasha: "it doesn't do open quotation marks..." Where did she get that from??

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