![\"Image](\"http:\/\/www.viewdata.org.uk\/download.php?cat=15_Prestel&file=bosroom.jpg\")
\n<\/span><\/a>Despite this, Prestel was instrumental in developing many of the technologies we now consider commonplace on the Internet and World Wide Web today.\u00a0\u00a0The Bank of Scotland had their HOBS “Home and Office Banking” service whereby you could manage your bank accounts online.\u00a0\u00a0Club 403 offered online grocery shopping.\u00a0\u00a0British Rail offered access to timetables.\u00a0\u00a0Kays had mail order shopping from their catalogues.\u00a0\u00a0There were several forums and chatlines where ordinary users could post messages and chat among themselves, and later, Micronet allowed anybody to publish their own pages, for a fairly modest fee.<\/p>\n
Prestel was also instrumental in providing the first taste of electronic mail that many people would experience. Being able to send simple messages for free to friends and family would seem to be a novelty, but it would soon turn out to To woo business users, Prestel launched Telex Link, which allowed any prestel subscriber to receive and send telex messages. In the days before Fax machines, the telex was the official business-to-business communications medium: Telex messages could be held to be legally binding just like a written letter.<\/p>\n In fact, it was only with the arrival of Micronet 800 in the mid 1980s, started as an online computer magazine by East Midlands Allied Press, and whom for a period gave away free modems for home computers with their subscriptions, that domestic usage began to rise.\u00a0\u00a0This was helped by access only being a local telephone call throughout most of the country – a facility otherwise unheard of in the times before “0845” and it’s like.\u00a0\u00a0Even so, Prestel subscriptions peaked at less than 100,000 subscribers – far below the “millions” of subscribers aimed for when launched.<\/p>\n During the daytime, when business usage was high, there was a per-minute charge to use Prestel, but in the evenings and weekends, traditionally the quiet times, it was free apart from the telephone call.\u00a0\u00a0Unfortunately, with Micronet being so popular, suddenly the quiet times became fairly busy!\u00a0\u00a0Prestel took over Micronet in 1989, and merged it with their other online offerings, forming the BT Dialcom Group.\u00a0\u00a0In 1991, Prestel decided to introduce a charge during the previously free times, effectively doubling the cost of accessing the service, and within months managed to kill off the home usage almost completely, confirmed by the closure of Micronet that October.\u00a0\u00a0 After a decision to concentrate on core network services and not value-added services, the whole lot was sold off to a private consortium, and from there it ended up with Financial Express, where, after a brief appearance as ‘New Prestel’ it was closed down completely.<\/p>\n Despite numerous enquiries, it seems that the hardware and software that was used to run Prestel has all vanished without trace.\u00a0\u00a0Financial Express seem to have lost everything, and even the BT Archives have nothing of consequence.\u00a0\u00a0All that remains is the relatively few isolated pages that were saved on disc by service users over the years.\u00a0\u00a0If you know different, please do get in touch!<\/p>\n More history on Wikipedia on Prestel<\/a> and Micronet 800<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Introduction Prestel was the GPO, later British Telecom’s, answer to teletext.\u00a0\u00a0With two way communications between user and servers, many more pages could be offered, and user interaction could be achieved through response frames to the Information Providers, user to user Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":323,"parent":47,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions\/322"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>be one of the most used features of the service. Many friendships were started and flourished through the interactions made possible via Prestel Mailbox, and Prestel was certainly responsible for more than one marraige, and perhaps the failure of several others.<\/p>\n