Long before anyone had heard of the Internet, early home computer users could read their morning newspapers online ... sort of. Steve Newman's 1981 story was broadcast on KRON San Francisco.
2 hours to download a fairly small amount of text, with a $5/hour connection charge? Meanwhile, I'm sitting here watching about it in a RU-vid video that I downloaded in 5 seconds over a 4G wireless connection on a custom gaming rig that I built myself and paid only $600 for. We've come a long way. But never forget that the people who invented 300bps modems, rotary dial landline phones, 5 1/2" floppy disks, and giant reel-to-reel tape cabinets helped pave the way to where we are today. And cheers to you, makers of our future!
WOW. It just goes to show you that KRON had the sense to identify an innovation that was going to lead to a major trend. The reporter and editor who worked on this 1981 report should be found and hired now to help save the media industry of today.
Wow... it took a little more than 10 years to make every person in this video either out of the job, or have their job completely turned inside out. That guy on the street had no idea what was coming...
I am a web programmer this is good stuff. Thanks for the upload it is always fun seeing what things used to be like I can remember connecting to an external dial up modem and nobody knew what the internet was
It was CompuServe. You're right that it wasn't connected to the internet until several years later, but CompuServe was larger and more advanced than the average BBS. They had access numbers all over the country, and their own pre-IP packet-switched network to move data to and from customers.
It would be refreshing to have simple, straight to the point interfaces like the one's in 1981. Too many bright colors and flashy images this day and age.
In my first job out of college at the Associated Press, I worked on this. At the time, I overheard the managing editor ask, "Why would anyone ever want to read the AP wire on a computer?"
Most amazing line: "the estimated two to three thousand home computer owners in the Bay area". I knew 1981, 1981 was a friend of mine but I'd have guessed that "home" computer owners were more numerous that in "the Bay area" by that time.
I love that the most cutting edge tech geek in the city in 1981 was some old codger. The next time my mother-in-law complains that she still can't figure out how to open an attachment, I'm gonna show her this vid.
@JesusManson323 I started on the internet in 1987 when I hooked up our college to the "rest of the world". It was a 56kbps connection and everything was text based. No graphics and about 10 years before the web took off. Connections were "telnet", file transfer was "FTP", and searches were with "gopher". One of our system programmers wrote a rudimentary real-time chat program using a split screen display. That was awesome for the time. We had fun chatting with random people mainly in the USA.
I remember when I finally upgraded to a 56k v92 modem and was excited by blistering download speeds of over 4KB a second! This clip is almost as old as me, yet the real advances have been made in only the last ten or fifteen years - I was still playing Unreal via dialup at the turn of the millenium... now I'm flying gunships across a vast, frozen battlefield on affordable 10Mb fibre-optic. I can't wait to see what's next...
@bestbytesmedia lol, you just reminded me of this older guy i know, it took him three days to figure out how to get his computer to say "hello charles" it was his first home computer. i dont think he had ever used one either. i love seeing the old technology that i wasnt aware of. i only used the shitty old programs at school. i was born 1981. i loved oregon trail. thats what makes a dull life like mine fun. looking back at how far we have come.
Best part was the throw-away line at the end: btw, it takes 2 hours to download it. So that's 2 hours without an available phone line in your home... superb!
I'm from Russia and we didn't even have computers tn the 80's! And you already had electronic networks in America at the time! All I can say is WOW! WOW! WOW! ))))))))
2 hours to receive the text of the newspaper....2 hours! jeeeesus. Thank god I was born in the mid 80's and only had to deal with dialup for a short time before broadband and highspeed took off.
I was just writing a story that takes place in 1984. This guy has the ability to create technology ahead of his time. It then Had me thinking was there an internet back then. My character knew what the internet was but the other girls his age didn't. I imagine most people didn't know what the internet was back then.
I love the subhead for one of the interview subjects "Owns Home Computer"! LOL Also, I'm amazed to see local news that's actually... news! Not a melange of car chases, puppies, celebritainment and thinly disguised commercials.
Wow, the news lights up Mr. Halloran's TRS-80 "television!" Incredible! And after seeing this, I never again want to see a newspaper griping about the Internet wrecking their business!
1: A TRS 80, amazing how advanced that computer was when it came out, in comparison to people looking at it as an antique today. 2:And that was just 30 years ago, wow and now we have video's and TV online. Just wait another 50 years and who knows what will happen.
@Y0ssariantheAssyrian Magazines and newspapers used typewriters for plain text, and a process called paste up-just like it sounds. Headlines, pictures, were printed out and laid out -literally cut and pasted-on single grid-like sheets, then turned into negatives, which then went to the printer. A lot of publications were still using this into the 90s. Seems archaic now.
"$5 an hour won't be much competition for the 20 cent street edition" How times have changed. It took two hours in 1981 because modems were 300 baud, or about 7 words per second by dialup. Now transfer rates are in the 100s and 1000s of kilobytes per second. That same 1981 newspaper would transfer in seconds today.
Technology always looks like progresses much faster when looking back. I think this is a great reminder that things almost always progress much slower than we think - especially when it comes to mass adoption and scalability. Re: "...a few years off".
Actually, the company that owned the Examiner in those days, Hearst, bought the Chronicle across town. The Chron (which owned KRON-TV) always had a stronger brand identity anyway.
@neil73 I had that "the internet is for nerds" attitude until the beginning of 1997 when I became obsessed with celebrity birthdays. I went on the internet for the first time and the rest is history. :)
Fair enough. The whole title of this video should have been "Beginning of the end of print journalism" but my first impression of my report as I uploaded it was that it was the beginning of personal online computing ... hence the Internet.
In 1982 I got a Apple II Plus with a max of 64K memory. It could display text but only in uppercase, I believe. The Examiner at the time was at the head of it's game.
Imagine 32 years later, a certain woman watching this very same video. Sitting down to her morning coffee turning on her laptop, smart phone or other such device to watch this video.....well what do you know it's that same woman watching herself 32 years ago.
"We're not going to lose a lot," said David Cole of the San Francisco Examiner; not realizing that what he was working on would eventually cause the death of his industry.
The Internet existed way before graphical browsers like Mosaic and Netscape came into use. It's those browsers that made the Internet more suitable to the common people instead of universities and government. CompuServe and other services definitely existed way before, I remember those days, dialing up into a BBS and communicating with other users on whatever help or tech forum you wanted.
I remember very well that modem speeds back then were measured in CPS -- characters per second. That's how slow it was. Two hours to download a (text only) newspaper sounds about right for the time.
Little did they know 29 years later these electronic newspapers would put traditional printed newspapers out of business. This was almost like watching the beginning sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. 1981 was the dawn of modern civilization. And I was born a mere 4 years later. If I were a computer, I'd be non functioning and sitting in a museum or something.
Classic!! Tandy TRS80's!! I still have my TRS80 (grey case model) and it still works! I've had it since new. I upgraded it to a whopping 64KB (KILObytes!!) of RAM and added a 'real' keyboard to it. :)
Imagine if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee turning on your laptop, smart phone or other such device to watch this video... wonder if she ever expected that one.
