After 38 years, ceefax is coming to a close. Before all this internet mullarky, it was the place to be to know what was going on in the World. No self respecting football fan would go anywhere else for results and any news about your team. Thank you Ceefax!!!
Seconded, Ceefax was basically the internet before the internet came along, used to get back from school everyday and get straight onto Ceefax to check the sport news and used to spend sat afternoons sat watching football scores come through (v slowly!!!)
Ceefax was a world leader at one point by using spare lines in the TV signal but having one of the first Ceefax sets it was frustratingly slow. Over the years it became indispensable for news, sport, weather and features, teletext, the ITV version, brought adverts and I booked many a good holiday through teletext with prices travel agents couldn't compete with. I add my thank you's to the boffin's behind all this, at times the BBC did get things right.
Nostalgic for Ceefax? Type 15 pages of news on a broken typewriter, then stick each page to a tortoise doing laps of your lounge.
With the end of Ceefax we lost one of the defining days of the season (two if you count the day they added the league table for the first time after about 6 games). You knew the pressure was building at the end of the season when you got home from the game to see where your result had put you in the table, and for the first time that season there were the dotted lines to show the promotion/playoff/relegation zones.
Used to really annoy my wife. Regular checks on Ceefax whilst she was watching her favourite programmes guaranteed an evening of silence.!
My son reminded me last night on the way to Boro, that the last time we looked at Ceefax, it was in 2008 when we were making sure we'd definitely be in the play-off places. It was more watchable than X-Factor.
Sky still have a similar system though. But i echo the comments on Cee Fax and yes it was good whilst it lasted. But time moves on. Just like the betamax video and even the vhs video recorders, we now have sky + boxes and the like. It wont be long before we say goodbye to the good old Fax machine. I was glad to see the end of telex machines though. What a noise they made.
Do people still have fax machines? I used to like using the Telex machine, it had it's own language and as it was live discussion, it was quite a good laugh. For those not familiar with it... http://wildland.owdjim.gen.nz/?p=36
At the time they were good but made one hell of a noise. The company i worked for at that time moved it into a spare empty room and you could still hear the bloody thing rattling away. Then we got noise cover for it and that was better. Yes they were good at the time but so glad we have moved on now. Fax machines are still used more than you think. But the scanner and email attachments are now the in thing.
