Read more: 鈥�Tech before its time: Six gadgets too good, too soon鈥�
The message on your screen says: 鈥淐an you come over and babysit?鈥� You type in your response, then check your bank account and the weather before leaving the house to return the blender you purchased online.
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It might surprise you to learn that residents of Coral Gables, Florida, were engaging in this behaviour in 1980, a full decade before Tim Berners-Lee put the first web links on the internet. And they weren鈥檛 using personal computers 鈥� all of this was happening on their television screens.
The system was called the Viewtron, and it was the brainchild of Norman Morrison, vice-president of technology at US publisher Knight-Ridder. He saw it mainly as a way for newspaper subscribers to get an early peek at the next day鈥檚 headlines. But the Viewtron also featured other aspects of today鈥檚 addictive internet: you could use your television to play games, shop online and even communicate with other users by way of a proto-email system.
The technology should have been a runaway hit. But in 1985, after the Viewtron had attracted 5000 subscribers, Knight-Ridder and its partner, telephone company AT&T, pulled the plug.
Its downfall, simply put, was networking. Despite its apparent similarities with the internet, the Viewtron system was not a linked web of computers. Instead, everything Knight-Ridder sent to its users鈥� TV sets was stored on a single mainframe computer in Miami Beach. 鈥淭he eight disc drives were monsters,鈥� Morrison says. 鈥淓ach one looked like a washing machine.鈥� For all their size, though, those drives stored only a few megabytes apiece and the system processed information at a rate equivalent to about 100 megahertz 鈥� today, even a simple desktop computer is capable of far more. As a result, even the Viewtron鈥檚 poor-quality graphics took an age to load, making screen navigation a chore.
No one was surprised by the Viewtron鈥檚 demise: Morrison鈥檚 group had begun to smell trouble when subscribers became more elusive, which coincided with the introduction of the personal computer.
鈥淲e kept thinking of the Viewtron as an analogue for a traditional newspaper,鈥� says Phil Meyer, who conducted the initial 50-family trial in Coral Gables. Own the pricey technology, Knight-Ridder thought, and it could control the market in computerised news delivery.
The PC changed all that. It simply offered more for less money, especially when, in 1983, internet provider CompuServe broke Viewtron鈥檚 monopoly on electronic messaging . 鈥淧eople had to spend $500 just to tie in to Viewtron and get nothing else,鈥� Morrison says. His team tried other pricing schemes, including monthly rental or per-hour rates, but nothing seemed to attract new customers. As PCs got cheaper, faster and more connected, the Viewtron just kept treading water.
Perhaps it all worked out for the best. Using the TV to pay your bills, after all, would be the worst kind of reality television.