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Ceefax and the Birth of Interactive TV


The world’s first teletext service went live on 23 September 1974

The team of journalists would monitor incoming wire copy from news agencies and when a story needed to be updated, they would work at a production terminal on a visual display unit. Ceefax became familiar even to people who didn’t have one of these newer televisions, as gaps in the broadcast schedule began to be filled with a rotating selection of its pages, accompanied by some background music. The service continued to be popular even amid the growth of BBC websites, but it came to an end when digital television was introduced as it relied on analogue signals to be broadcast.

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