 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. (June 2015) |
 Logo | |
| Developer | Post Office Telecommunications |
|---|---|
| Key people | Samuel Fedida |
| Type | General-purpose public videotex service |
| Launch date | 1978 |
| Discontinued | 1994 |
| Platform(s) | GEC 4000 minicomputers in a star network configuration with packet-switched connections |
| Operating system(s) | OS4000 operating system supporting BABBAGE high-level assembly language |
| Status | Discontinued |
| Members | c. 90,000 subscribers at peak |
| Pricing model | Subscription (quarterly) and usage (time spent on system, some pages, some messaging service actions) |
Prestel (abbrev. from press telephone), the brand name for the UK Post Office Telecommunications's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979. It achieved a maximum of 90,000 subscribers in the UK and was eventually sold by BT in 1994.
The technology was a forerunner of on-line services today. Instead of a computer, a television set connected to a dedicated terminal was used to receive information from a remote database via a telephone line. The service offered thousands of pages ranging from consumer information to financial data but with limited graphics.