The Prestel Factor

CAMRA’s website is nearly three decades old, yet years before the Internet became a reality, CAMRA was already making baby steps towards the world wide web. A decade before the introduction of the Internet, there was already a similar ‘web’ based system doing the rounds called Prestel, commercially launched nationwide in September 1979 by Post Office Telecommunications (BT Group PLC), a division of the Post Office, it was markedly the world’s first public viewdata service. Prestel was the brainchild of Samuel Fedida (head of the Computer Applications Research Division), who hit upon the idea of developing a viewdata system that used simple text and images which required a low bandwidth, following the failure of the Picturephone system that overwhelmed the phone lines. He originally envisioned for the Post Office to play an active editorial role, but management sought to encourage other organisations to generate content instead.  Similar to the Internet, Prestel offered a wide variety of content, ranging from the stock market, central government departments, national and local news, sports, travel, horoscopes and consumer motorist advice. A number of major organisations had their own dedicated IPs like British Rail, RAC, Sealink and Reuters, retailers including WHSmith and Currys, as well as charities like Save the Children. Users could access Prestel using an adapted television set, via a keypad or dedicated keyboard, while home computers users could also adapt their sets using an acoustic modem. Initially, most people viewed Prestel as an expensive gimmick aimed towards business, this changed in 1981 when BT reduced the quarterly subscription fee for home users to £5, along with the prices of equipment. Unlike the Teletext system, it was fully interactive and unlimited in size, the service expanded its capabilities with the launch of Mailbox the same year, which enabled instant messaging between different terminals, and in time users could also do online shopping, home banking, book holidays and tele-software, tropes that were later synonymous with the Internet.

Less than two years after Prestel became available nationwide, in April 1981 Hertfordshire became the first county in the country (outside of the central terminals in London) to launch its own localised Prestel service. It was known as HERTS288 (also its front-page number), which was set up by a consortium of the County council and district councils to provide a community information service. Initially seven district councils signed up to the scheme, but this was later expanded. At the touch of a button people could find information on educational and recreational facilities, local businesses also brought space for advertising pages, the first to buy space was the National Reprographic Centre for Information based in Bayford. In late 1982, HERTS288 approached CAMRA to publish an electronic guide to Hertfordshire’s top real ale pubs. CAMRA went along with the offer and produced a Prestel service that would centre around Hertfordshire’s top 100 pubs with the entries taken from the 1983 edition of edition of Real Draught Beer in Hertfordshire. The pubs were arranged by town and grouped by district, some pubs (and breweries) had full information pages which consisted of an address, a brief description of the venue and beers currently available, like The Barley Mow in St. Albans which was among a number of pubs who was behind the scheme and brought itself a page of advertising. After several months of development, the service was launched at a joint meeting of four district CAMRA branches on 19th April 1983. Along with a Top 100 pubs page, the site also offered a news section detailing upcoming beer festivals and other local events, a Pick of Pubs feature provided an interactive element for users, it was envisioned that users could vote their approval and disapproval of a pub by filling in a response frame (form) by including the pub name and rating out of 10, quality of beer, quality of food, general impression and service, along with additional comments. The information was then sent to Dave Burns who was the editor of the service, markedly if they received more than three detrimental reviews for a pub, CAMRA would send an official round to the pub in question to assess its continued suitability in the guide, if it failed to reach expectations then the pub would be removed from the top 100. This particular feature was demonstrated in an episode of Food & Drink broadcast on 5^th May 1983, a rare use of technology in a program that showcased the UK’s culinary/ beverage industry. 

Over the next few months, there were sporadic mentions of CAMRA’s dedicated Prestel service in the press, from a report in the Hertford Mercury and Reformer to several brief mentions in issues of the Hertfordshire Newsletter, the branch magazine for CAMRA in Hertfordshire at the time, its final mention appeared in Issue No.68 published in December 1983, as part of a year long retrospective of highlights. Despite the fact that the Prestel service was available to users nationwide, it appeared that CAMRA’s Prestel platform only appealed to a small local audience and no other branches outside Hertfordshire copied the scheme. This was reflective in the slow uptake of subscribers of Prestel, around the time of CAMRA’s launch on Prestel, there were only 18,000 subscribers, 2500 of them business. Home users were put off by the high prices, a monochrome Prestel television set cost £650, more than triple the cost of a conventional colour TV at the time. Although the number of subscribers increased later that decade, so did the subscription fees, and by the early 90’s the service was gradually wound down due to financial issues before being discontinued in 1994, just as the Internet was in ascendance. While CAMRA’s brief flutter with Prestel was merely viewed as a blip at the time, it was a window into an interactive future that would expand the organisation’s reach. In November 1996, CAMRA’s website launched on the fledgling Internet, succeeding where their dalliance with Prestel failed a decade earlier; it ushered in a new era that revolutionised the organisation.