Watched this in wonder , it’s amazing how much they got right with online banking and price comparison, video and email. The other interesting bit is they weren’t expecting the average punter to have computers but complicated terminal affairs, which is kinda obvious from the context of the time, computers were HUGE water cooled monsters giving a whole 2 MHz processing power (or whatever). The idea of all those services being able to be provided without one is remarkable.
They almost go the name right ‘Wideband’ - I suppose if we had really been in charge of the computer evolution that’s what it would have been called. If only we hadn’t been such paranoid buggers in the immediate post war era we’d probably have had all this 20 odd years ago.
All hail Tommy Flowers and Dollis Hill.

You make a good point about it being all terminal based, which, yes, was a totally reasonable assumption at the time! Of course, there was a brief interlude of TV banking and the like in the late ’90s and early ’00s, which I did use, along with the email service the set-top boxes offered, but that’s now history! Personal computers are obviously a lot more versatile. It’s scary to think how much money was wasted on defence in the Cold War era which could have been put into developing this sort of technology instead. Sigh.

This film proved popular with my workmates, one of whom sent me a link to the ‘mother of all demos’: Doug Engelbart showcasing the birth of modern personal computing in 1968; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4kp9Ciy1nE
He patented the mouse, but the patent ran out before personal computers took off, so he didn’t make any money from it!

Interesting, the vid pretty much shows the mouse fully described - I only hope those at AT&T research didn’t try to patent it again (where I think the idea resurfaced ) , although I suspect (without searching on the interweb) that they did. Its seems that we have a whole discipline that continually starts itself from scratch - which seems to bear out in real life, its an area that has permanent amnesia, never learning from the past.

The other interesting thing was the light based keyboard on his left I’ve seen these things being brought into the market recently and they look cool. Pity its 40 odd years since they were first though of.

It seems that there’s not a non-techy history of telecommunications out there, which is a shame. I’d love to write one, but not sure I’d ever get an advance!