Tomorrow's World - Computer program transmitted over TV

This clip is from Tomorrow's World (6.55pm on 3rd December 1981). Presenters Kieran Prendeville and Su Ingle demonstrate how computer programs are save on cassette tape, with a plug for the new BBC Micro. They then transmit a program for the Apple II and ZX81 but the program does not work on the show. The following week Su showed the program running and people wrote in to say that it had worked.
Issue 3029 of the Radio Times (genome.ch.bbc....) came out on 26th November 1981, a week before the programme was transmitted and had a piece explaining how to record the program (imgur.com/a/O6.... So if you bought the Radio Times you had a week to prepare!
For a clip of the programs running (on emulators) visit • Tomorrow's World - Com... .

[@judgewest2000]

In the 80's they didn't believe in backgrounds

[@ncot_tech]

They hadn't been invented yet.

[@karenelizabeth1590]

2:37 You know your audience is above average when you actually have to tell them not to open up their TVs and dismantle the speaker wires.

[@fedos]

This is going to change everything.

[@MrDegsy69]

Fedos you have just been spoiled and ruined by living in a world of technology on demand and not knowing the difference. Of course people were skeptical back then and laughed at this and looking back at it is plainly ridiculous as all this forecast technology has already been assimilated and happens transparently in the background everyday. Even now with things like SIRI it has serious limitations. I would hardly call it an iRobot like future yet but amazingly the post millenial generation are already subservient to technology like this and never question its origins or where it is going.

[@lukekline9513]

@@MrDegsy69 Woah, relax man

[@digitalparadisestudios7741]

James May's long lost twin?

[@MirlitronOne]

Later experiments for the BBC Micro worked, as did transferring via the Teletext adaptor (if you could afford one). ITV also had a system with a little flickering square in the corner of the picture, transferred via a simple phototransistor circuit (that also worked as a light pen). It was exciting at the time!

[@simonlovett151]

I actually tried this when it was first broadcast. I had a Sinclair ZX81 and held a mono cassette recorder up to the TV speaker to record it. No, it didn't work! The signal to noise ratio would have been appauling. I did manage to share a very short ZX Spectrum program over FM CB radio 'though, about a year later, with my friend who lived a few miles away :-D

[@Spookieham]

An extra vote for the use of FM CB. We still send stuff like pictures over amateur radio but the bandwidth us way, way too low for anything else

[@moonshinepz]

Yours must have been one of the earliest wireless data transmissions!

[@mayway4822]

I love the part where they say if you have a different system try it anyway. Bwahahahaha!!!

[@wisteela]

Yes, that got me too 😊

[@adenowirus]

Since it's in BASIC it might work on other computers. I tried typing the ZX-81 version morf yrgna posted into Commodore 64 emulator and it worked after slight modifications.

[@Mr_ToR]

@@adenowirus modulation would be different so different system would not be able to convert this audio signal to data eventhough the code might still work if you typed it.

[@straightpipediesel]

@@Mr_ToR Most computers used the same standard, called the Kansas City Standard.

[@mbvideoselection]

@@straightpipediesel Not true, every brand of 8-bit computer used its own encoding system for cassette. There wasn't a single standard.

[@sovietonion72]

I just love the black background just like on the old computers.

[@danielmolineux3644]

spider 1972 why?

[@sovietonion72]

Daniel Molineux sarcasm

[@dunebasher1971]

For anybody saying that only one program was transmitted, no, there were two. The first was for the Apple II, and the second was for the ZX-81. You can hear the change in the data speed at 3:14, and you can also see a splice go through the tape machine where they've deliberately removed almost any pause between the two different programs.

[@dabubbie]

I wrote the code to do the BBC Micro demo in this show ! I was working at Acornsoft at the time (and also living rent free by being a guinea pig a diet drug experiment at Addenbrooke's in Cambridge. Acorn had won the BBC Micro contract and the Tomorrow World show was going to plug the new machine. I drove down with machines (they were rare pre-production prototypes) and met at one of the producers house in London. He explained what the demo was going to be a I wrote the code "Graphics" and then put up lots of boring numbers. We set up the machines in the studio the next day and lots of people had fun playing with them. But the show was live and once they turned on all the lights (and running all day with people poking at them) the machines all crashed. Super stressful ... so as the the show music started up I had to turn off all the BBC Micro machines... let them cool down and then reboot them just in time for the live demo. Luckily they worked ok just in time. I moved to USA in 1989 and explained years later to my daughters B and E (then aged about 8 and 6) "In the 1980's I was young rich and famous" - E - "But Dad if you were famous where are all your fans ?" - B - "They are all dead"

[@LarryDors]

Interesting! For those who want more information about John's work should track down his book 'Creative Graphics on the BBC Micro Computer' published in 1982. 👍

[@stephenc6648]

I love the fact that the BBC’s ban on advertising and mentioning brand names meant that they didn’t say which two computers they were using. It caused confusion because the Apple II and ZX81weren’t compatible in any way. They failed to mention that there were two sets of code. I managed to get it to work on my ZX81 but not until a lot of trial and error with volume and tone controls, months after the broadcast. I don’t know why I bothered as I knew how little the program did. After this, the BBC did broadcast a very limited selection of software via Ceefax and on (I think) AM radio.

[@LarryDors]

ITV's computer show Database transmitted software as audio, but the only clip I can find that mentions it is kzbin.info/www/bejne/baGWnZ2EZ5lng9U.

[@picobyte]

Those people..There are 100 Computers for every human on this planet today.

[@jez9999]

"It says error but it's even misspelt that"

[@craigdavidson2278]

....."have you tried turning it off and on again?"

[@Rudolf_Edward]

I did this in my 'pirate' days on FM. My classmates recorded it and were able to play C64 games!

[@jackiewalsh5795]

I love watching these.lol.it makes me feel like I'm from the future..I. d love to go back and tell them how computers are doing now...x

[@davidbock2863]

So I just recorded this to my mac with Audacity, looked at the waveform, and looked at the spec for the Apple ][ and zx81 case ports. Looking at the waveform, I see what pretty obviously look like different peaks for 0 and 1, and what appear to be two different bit rates. From the specs, I think they have both programs here... the first tone is Apple’s 770 Hz tone in ‘chirps’ of 650 microseconds, followed by almost 3 seconds of Apple data. Then a 10th second of silence, followed by almost 10 seconds of zx-81 data. Apples cassette was 1333 bps, while the zx-81 was 250 bps, so it makes sense a simpler program would take ~3x longer to transmit. Sadly, I think KZbin’s audio compression may have made this unreadable. I’m still poking around though... since we know part of the message that was displayed on screen, we would be able to convert part of it to bits and see if we can find it in the bitstream. I’m thinking this may havactually worked on both machines! The Apple][ would ignore everything after a successful load, and the zx-81 May have ignored the faster Apple chatter that came before.

[@LarryDors]

Despite what some commenters have said, there were two programs transmitted. I loaded them into emulators (as I don't have an Apple or ZX81) and they worked as shown (kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYjZp42kfrSJl7c). Someone else has taken this clip and transferred it back onto a VHS tape and fed the audio into an actual Apple ][ and ZX81 at the same time (FozzTexx, at kzbin.info/www/bejne/jZrCp6Kbbruhj7c).

[@GriffinCorreia]

That sexy reel to reel action

[@sovietonion72]

And remember to keep very quiet you don't won't any background noise, he he

[@mick7909]

The most hilarious thing is they were doing this experiment after the introduction of texetext (cfax).

[@dunebasher1971]

How is it "hilarious"? The vast majority of people still did not have teletext TVs when this was broadcast. Teletext TVs were much more expensive than regular ones (which were expensive enough by themselves); the days of it being a standard function on all TVs were a good 10-15 years away. We didn't get a teletext-capable TV until 1984; I had a home computer (Acorn Atom) in 1981.

[@epiendless1128]

This is much more practical in today's world, when we can Chromecast youtube to our TVs and record onto tape from there at leisure. ;-)

[@TheCodeTinkerer]

hahaha oh the gorgeous modem sounds!

[@PremierAudio]

I don't have a betamax machine either, But I do have a couple of VHS players, A friend of mine bought the Philips laser disc player, When it first came out, And another friend of mine bought a Philips, Video 2000 with its reversible tapes.

[@NikHYTWP]

If anyone has a Micro or ZX machine they should try this!

[@BetamaxFlippy]

Did anyone here try to extract the program from this video?

[@johnsmith-qn2gd]

Me.

[@picobyte]

Did it work!? After all the historic conversions this video had..

[@LarryDors]

What morf yrgna listed must have been the ZX81 simplified version of the program as the video shows the Apple II version at the end with longer text on the screen. As I had a BBC Micro I couldn't run either version!

[@fortitude9932]

morf yrgna damn like a digital message in a bottle from tape reel to cable tv to vhs to KZbin to you 35 years later 😆

[@Mr_ToR]

@morf yrgna Dude how did you get these? I've extracted the audio. The audio is stereo mp3, so I normalize and converted to mono wav. Used this software here: www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/tapeutils/overview.html However, only some part of the code is displayed. I have tried various volume levels, different audio formats, none helped. maybe that program is not good I'm not sure. I thought youtube's audio and data compression would probably made this file unreadable so hoh did you make it???

[@realallinone]

when internet didn't exist worldwide yet

[@quatz1981]

A ZX-81 computer, my dad had one of those it was our first computer.

[@picobyte]

I've build me one myself and still it was expensive.But great fun! My parents never understood that.Even now..

[@picobyte]

Someone had to design the computer you're reacting on.

[@clararosie4582]

quatz1981 my friend (aged 42), loves all computer vintage stuff. He still owns a working ZX 81 :-)

[@quatz1981]

+Claire Maher i have an old bbc micro and its still going strong. these old machines were built to last.

[@Mr_ToR]

@@quatz1981 all old capacitors will slowly start to electrically leak and turn into resistors thus creating other more serious problems in other parts of the circuit. All old capacitors need to be replaced. They will not last. Normally DC current can not pass through a cap but a leaky cap will let it pass through. You need to have it re-capped meaning all of its capacitors should be replaced. Ofcourse you don't need to replace ceramic caps but all the film or electrolytics must go.

[@mbvideoselection]

Well it only sounded to me like they transmitted one file, there was only one set of pilot tones. So my guess is, Kieran only played the ZX81 version, they tried to load it into the Apple II, predictably failing. I don't know why they didn't have both computers set up to try simultaneously.

[@sambrown9494]

Ah, no it was two. The second half was the zx81, which you might not remember didn't use a pilot tone. Unlike the spectrum and others, it just dove straight into the good stuff.

[@mbvideoselection]

@@sambrown9494 Well being preceded by the Apple II's version was bound to fox the ZX81, and vice versa, unless you knew exactly when to start or stop the tape to miss out the wrong one.

[@richardc.mongler2122]

They didn't give people a whole lot of time to prepare

[@moramento22]

I guess they talked about the experiment at the beginning of the whole programme as well and information of it might have been in things like RadioTimes for example

[@mick7909]

They did they gave everyone a week to prepare because this was advertised in the radio times a week before and it happened right at the end of the show and it was talked about at the start.

[@LarryDors]

Checking on the BBC Genome site at genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1981-12-03 issue 3029 of the Radio Times came out on 26th November 1981, a week before the programme was transmitted. I posted a scan of the article they had in the description, imgur.com/a/O6doGLj. So if you bought the Radio Times you had a week to prepare!

[@altebander2767]

This is actually not quite as simple to do as it sounds. Essentially those home computer tape systems were based on the idea that you can record impulses onto the tape. For this your transmission line needs to have a linear phase response, meaning that all the frequencies have the same delay. This is not very important for normal audio as, except for extreme conditions, you won't hear such a problem. This is also why some expensive tape recorders had problems with computer data. They traded linear phase for a better frequency response which gives an overall better sound. There were multiple ways to work around this problem. The one used in Germany was to filter the signal in a way so it would be based on a sine wave. This is done by filtering out all harmonics of the signal. In the GDR they transmitted their signal via FM-stereo with one channel having the direct audio, and the other one having it attenuated by 20 dB. This causes the signal to be present twice in the stereo multiplex.

[@LarryDors]

This never really took off but computer programs on records faired a little bit better. I had the Kissing the Pink 12" single of The Other Side of Heaven, which had a BBC Micro program which you had to record to cassette so you could load it. It had a digitised version of the front cover but did not look very good due to lack of colours and resolution. Pete Shelley's second album XL1 had a ZX Spectrum program that displayed graphics and timed lyrics to all the tracks. The Thompson Twins even had an adventure game for the Spectrum and Commodore 64 on a flexi disc given away with a computer magazine.

[@Clancydaenlightened]

The first form of "WiFi" internet....

[@billsmith281]

Wow the futures looking great🤣🤣

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

"War Games" 1983! Talking computer!

[@LarryDors]

The computer isn't doing the talking, it's just dialling a telephone number to hear a recording over the landline, so I'm afraid it is not a talking computer. 😥

[@PremierAudio]

I am sure I remember doing this with my new ZX81, As I always watched TW.

[@LarryDors]

+delldimension2345 It was THE technology programme to watch in those days. I'm sure I have other clips from the programme on Betamax but I don't have a working Betamax machine anymore. I didn't have a working VHS machine for a while, but my local charity shop still sells them for a tenner so I got a replacement!

[@Spookieham]

There are countless tens of thousands of people who made great careers in science and engineering because of Tomorrows world me included

[@takeonemusic5537]

they use the same system on siri now on iPhones lol

[@diegovera1353]

Anyone else thinks that girl was really cute?

[@dgramop]

... and that's how dubstep was born

[@anaccount8474]

I don’t see these ‘computer’ things catching on.

[@RCAvhstape]

They don't give the viewer very much time to set up the recorder.

[@moramento22]

I guess the experiment was mentioned at the beginning of the programme, and maybe in some publications like RadioTimes for example

[@Spookieham]

And the papers as well - home computers were still new and big news

[@yaosio]

Hello fellow humans I am not a computer program sent over TV.

[@Eloybb1]

1 Cassete = 1KB

[@LarryDors]

A 'cassette' tape is not a fixed length, so saying that it holds 1KB is not right. Each computer system uses a different format and baud rate so again you cannot quote a correct figure that covers both. The BBC Micro used a 1200 baud rate and you could fit 48k on one side of a C15, but tapes came in different lengths so that figure could vary. Most of the original software titles for computers like the BBC Micro, C64, Spectrum, etc. came on tape, and those programs were bigger than 1Kb. The ZX81 had 1Kb of on-board memory (RAM) but that could be expanded to 16Kb and also had an 8Kb ROM. The Apple II could anything from 4Kb to 64Kb of RAM and a 12Kb ROM.

[@FUGGL3Z]

Yeah nice

[@killuminatoV01]

witchcraft. they will never catch on 😆

[@vitalhygiene3546]

Computers, cassettes, all this new tech. Will never catch on. Next you'll say we will be using touch screens and that cars will be electric, haaa Haa Haa. Never

[@Moreno6000]

Is it weird if I want a pc from the 80's more than one with a core i3

[@Reikyrr]

Get an arduino, they are technically not PCs but you can make them into one.

[@moonshinepz]

You really had to put a lot of effort in to get a computer virus in those days.

[@LarryDors]

Well the first virus 'in the wild' was Elk Cloner, which ran on Apple DOS. That was in 1982 and this clip is from December 1981 so technically it wasn't around at the time. I doubt that any program transmitted like this would have a virus attached. The internet wouldn't really get going for another couple of years, so the only way software (and viruses) could circulate was by swapping discs or early BBS systems. So yeah, getting a virus would take some effort!

[@moonshinepz]

@@LarryDors great info, cheers. Yea, some effort is an understament 🤣 I never got any of those from the TV to work, but had some marginal success with typing in code that they used to print in magazines, which was pretty hard work in the days of two finger typing.

[@pig0115]

And this one gives you VAT........ Very boring

[@AdvancedMarketingGro]

😃😃😃👍

[@mr.personhumanson6871]

Is this SSTV? Couldn't decode it

[@LarryDors]

If you mean is this Slow-scan television, then no it isn't. If you read the description it was a normal terrestrial transmission on BBC 1 in December 1981. Someone copied the KZbin clip back onto VHS tape and fed the audio into an Apple II and ZX81 and it worked, see kzbin.info/www/bejne/jZrCp6Kbbruhj7c) but if you want to see the programs, just check out the clip referenced at the end of my description.

[@mr.personhumanson6871]

@@LarryDors I checked it out, thanks

[@Spookieham]

Nope SSTV sounds very different you can almost hear sstv draw in the audio

[@dashq40]

Anybody knows if the program can be decoded with some digital modem program like Fldigi or other ham modem software, thanks!

[@LarryDors]

The sound on the clip is not a radio or modem signal. It is an audio recording of a computer program that would have been loaded by tape into a ZX-81 or Apple II computer. It cannot be decoded by anything other than one of those computers or an emulator that can take audio input to load a program (which as far as I know none can). Emulators can only load tape or disk image files, so the audio recording would have to be converted to that format before it could be used. It is a simple BASIC program that morf yrgna has listed in the comment section so if you really wanted to see it running you could type it in.

[@MiniStockpot]

LarryDors Actually quite a few spectrum emulators will take a wav file and even some support mic input. I'm sure it would work, I've loaded games from a youtube clip before :)

[@LarryDors]

Not all emulators load ZX-81 games, because that's what's been transmitted here, plus an Apple II program. As it's a simple BASIC program, it would be quicker to just type in the program. But if anyone wants to try it and then upload a video of the program (presuming you can capture output from the emulator) I'll add a link to the video in the description.

[@LarryDors]

I've uploaded a clip showing the two programs running a ZX-81 and Apple II emulator respectively. See the description for the link or kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYjZp42kfrSJl7c.

[@n17ikh]

Yes, there are decoders available. github.com/shred/tzxtools is one, but there are others.

[@leemansell5373]

But will it play crysis?

[@LarryDors]

So this is a video clip recorded in December 1981 (as stated in the description) and your're asking if it will play Crysis, a first person shooter released in November 2007). The ZX81 had 1Kb of memory which could be expanded to 16Kb. The Apple II had between 4Kb and 48Kb of memory depending on the model. Even the best coders in the world would not be able to make a game written 26 years in the future, with a PC requirement of at least 1GB of RAM, run on either of these machines. So the answer is no, the ZX81 and Apple II cannot play Crysis. It's like asking of you can play Doom on a Super Nintendo or a Kodak Digital Camera. Actually looking at kzbin.info/www/bejne/oV6kn6mnnrCtoLs or kzbin.info/www/bejne/e4vEqKSHi8yehaM that is possible.

[@anonUK]

@@LarryDors "Joke". Look it up. Not on a ZX81.

[@ncot_tech]

ERRERR

[@jayh9529]

They even taped there lies lol

[@LarryDors]

What 'lies' do you mean, and shouldn't 'there' be 'their'?