Tag Archives: 1980s

Lear Siegler ADM-5, 1981. Textmode terminal. Could also show graphics, if you added $1000. Pic from here.

Viditel was a Dutch videotex standard, launched in 1980. With a special vidimodem and a homecomputer, you reached out in the world in teletext style. There were about 30,000 users. More info here and here.

Quilt by Betty Rogers (Robert & Helen Cargo Collection).

Obscure C64 textmode software from 83/84. Microtel 600 was for videotex (Viditel in the Netherlands) and telesoftware (software that you download through teletext). Com-In seems to be for radio communication (RTTY) and other things. The software at the top (PA3ASM) is some sort of assembler or machine code monitor?

Pics from here. Thanks to Akira for the suggestion.

Cellular Automata for the C64 by Ian Adam & Transactor Magazine (1987).

A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as on and off (in contrast to a coupled map lattice). Via wikipedia.

Wachstum by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, 1980.

Some teletext/videotex standards offer more than alphanumerical characters. Like the Canadian Telidon, which used vector graphics. These are Telidon images, made by Jacques Palumbo in 1986.

Meanwhile in Japan, videotex was more complex: it was alphaphotographic. That is a combination of text and hi-res photos. It supposedly worked like a fax machine for the TV. See Captain.

“Nancy Reagan Takes the Subway”, an interactive comic strip by Maria Manhattan produced at the Alternate Media Center at NYU in 1982 with the Norpak Telidon terminal.

Sometimes sprites feel like cross-stitch. Commodore Computing International magazine cover (1983).

The Park by 9-year-old Richard Hadland. Won first prize in the Under 12 Still category in Commodore’s International Art Challenge 1984. via Commodore Computing International (vol 3, 1984).