Downloading Software from 80s British TV: A Blast from the Past
2025-04-07
This article explores two ingenious methods for downloading software from British television broadcasts in the 1980s. The first, using Teletext, leveraged the blank intervals between TV frames, but was slow and required specialized hardware. The second, Visicode, utilized the electron beam scan of the TV screen to detect light changes for data reception, achieving higher speeds but still needing custom circuitry. Both demonstrate the ingenuity of engineers adapting limitations of analog TV into innovative features.