Successes
In contrast to the demise of the British system, the French equivalent of Prestel, Teletel/Minitel, which used the technically slightly superior CEPT2 standard, received substantial public backing when millions of Minitel terminals were handed out free to telephone subscribers (causing Alcatel huge financial problems). As a consequence the Teletel network became very popular in France, and remained well used, with access later also possible over the Internet. After a short postponement, Minitel closed finally on 30th June 2012.
In 1979 The New Opportunity Press launched Careerdata, an interactive Graduate recruitment service devised and designed by Anthony Felix, the New Opportunity Press MD, and supported by GEC's Hirst Research centre in Wembley, London, who provided 12 terminals which were installed in the largest UK University Careers Advisory Services. This was the first commercial application on the new medium and was featured in the Prestel Road Show which toured the UK and some European centres. A closed access videotex system based on the Prestel model was developed by the travel industry, and continues to be almost universally used to this day by travel agents throughout the country: see Viewdata. The Prestel technology was also sold abroad to several countries, and in 1984 Prestel won a UK Queen's Award for Industry both for its innovative technology and use of British products (it largely ran on equipment provided by GEC Computers).
In 1979 Michael Aldrich invented online shopping, a type of e-commerce, using a modified domestic colour television equipped with the Prestel chip set and connected to a real-time transaction-processing computer via a domestic dial-up telelphone line. During the 1980s he sold these online shopping systems to large corporations mainly in the UK. All the terminals on these systems could also access the Prestel systems. Aldrich installed the first travel industry system in Thomson Holidays in 1981.
Read more about this topic: Prestel
Famous quotes containing the word successes:
“You may have enemies whom you hate, but not enemies whom you despise. You must take pride in your enemy: then your enemy’s successes will be your successes as well.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Do your children view themselves as successes or failures? Are they being encouraged to be inquisitive or passive? Are they afraid to challenge authority and to question assumptions? Do they feel comfortable adapting to change? Are they easily discouraged if they cannot arrive at a solution to a problem? The answers to those questions will give you a better appraisal of their education than any list of courses, grades, or test scores.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)