The unlikely pioneers of online shopping

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2020

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1984, a 72-year-old grandmother became the first to try a new online shopping system, years before the arrival of the internet. Mrs Jane Snowball had been given new Videotex technology which allowed her to order her groceries using a tv and a remote control. The system was part of a community project to help the elderly and vulnerable in the English town of Gateshead. The technology was the brainchild of Michael Aldrich, head of the communications firm, Rediffusion (later ROCC). Alex Last spoke to John Phelan, who designed the system's online shopping application.

Photo: Mrs Snowball shopping from home using her remote control and tv. (Gateshead Council)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:37.0	Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last.
0:46.0	And today as we deal with life in lockdown we look back to a pioneering experiment in home online shopping almost 40 years ago.
0:55.0	We were doing something which today is so commonplace, but back then was so new.
1:08.0	We were, in a sense, 15 to 20 years ahead of our time. Our story begins not in Silicon Valley, but in the town of Gates Ed in Northeast England in
1:22.4	1984.
1:24.0	There Mrs. Jane Snowball, a 72-year-old grandmother sat in an armchair in her house
1:30.0	and picked up a small square chunky TV remote control.
1:34.0	She pressed a few keys on the remote and a TV screen began to fill with text.
1:39.0	It was a list of goods on offer at her local Tesco supermarket. By pressing buttons on the remote, she
1:45.8	ordered eggs, cornflakes and margarine. It was the start of a pioneering online shopping
1:51.4	experiment years ahead of the internet.
1:55.0	Mrs Snowball never saw a computer.
1:59.0	Never.
2:00.0	Mrs Snowball saw a television. Her connection to the television was a TV remote.
2:08.0	The system was created by Michael Aldridge, head of the technology firm Rediffusion, later called Rock.
2:15.8	In 2013, he spoke to the BBC.
	...

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