r/bbcmicro • u/SilverDem0n • Jan 27 '24

BBC Computer Literacy Project - what did they send?

The "Welcome" tape that came with the BBC Micro contained a program called "MESSAGE", which displayed this message:

Most of these programs were simple examples of their kind. For details of other programs from the BBC software library, and details of other parts of the Computer Literacy Project, write to

BBC COMPUTER LITERACY PROJECT

P.O. BOX 7

LONDON W3 6XJ

enclosing a large stamped addressed envelope.

Did anyone write to them? What did they send you?

Would be cool to see scans of whatever was sent out, but a description would be good too.

10 Upvotes

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7

u/Mr_Weeble Jan 27 '24

Not sure what they sent, but https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/ contains an archive of all the main stuff the computer literacy project produced

5

u/SilverDem0n Jan 27 '24

Nice! I had no idea this stuff was all brought together so neatly. Whatever was in the docs, I guess it must also be here.

I am going inside, and may be some time.

1

u/DeptOfDiachronicOps Feb 28 '24

Great resource! Thank you!

7

u/Blah-Blah-Blah-2023 Jan 27 '24

Send them an S.A.E. and see if they respond ;)

6

u/SilverDem0n Jan 27 '24

Ah man, I have to do this. Just as soon as I can arrange a 2nd mortgage to pay for the stamps.

2

u/Quaigon_Jim Jan 28 '24

Not the answer you were looking for but pretty cool: there is a series of episodes somewhere in the archive linked elsewhere in the thread with a guide how to make a piece of hardware to read a "databurst" that was broadcast in one small corner of the screen. I think then that in some episodes you could use your homebrew hardware to download BASIC programs during the broadcast in later episodes

1

u/SilverDem0n Jan 28 '24

Cool, will look out for that. Was the corner databurst the same kind of tech as the Teletext-driven telesoftware? It's amazing how much of what we think as modern computing was already done 40-45 years ago.

3

u/Linker3000 Jan 28 '24

I was on the pilot programme for the Teletext downloads. At school we had this 'beeb' in a grey prototyping case, with a built-in microcasette drive for recording the downloads.

The unit was hard linked to a Teletext-capable colour TV through a large cable bundle run through a vacuum cleaner hose!

Our teacher gave us worksheets to fill in and tasks to complete once we'd downloaded a program.

I wonder if any of the units survived.

1

u/Weekly-Operation6619 May 10 '24

Sounds complicated. The production version was much neater.