How to send an "E mail" 1984

[mwooldri]

41. This was some expensive stuff at the time.

Cost to subscribe to the service.
Cost to make the call to the remote computer on a per minute basis.
Cost to view pages on the Prestel system.
Cost to send messages.
And in GPO days cost to have a special line and plug.

Man we have come a long way since then.

However for 20p (about 25 cents) per recipient you could email spam. Mind "email addresses" were the last 6 digits of your phone number and details were as public as the phone book. Yes, you could have an ex-directory "address" but... it'll cost ya... Maybe though this model of email addressing and fee structure has its merits? After all only companies with deep pockets would send you spam.

But in that video.. a Rotary dial phone to call the remote computer? And a GPO phone too... (pre. British Telecom)

The computer was recognisable to me immediately as a BBC... I think every school in the UK had one. BBC computers came about because the BBC planned a series of computer literacy TV programmes and needed a computer to go along with it. Contest was held, Acorn Computers won out over Sinclair. Acorn (or rather Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber) went on to develop the RISC processor, which survived Acorn's demise to be the foundation of every CPU in nearly every cellphone (and tons of other devices) today.