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Tomorrow's World: Mobile Phone 13 September 1979 - BBC

BBC · 2M views · 2010-01-07 · 6:37

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Overview

A 1979 BBC Tomorrow's World segment where Michael Rodd tries an experimental British cordless mobile phone prototype.

On Hacker News

Shared as a period piece showing how past TV predicted technologies that later became common.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2019–2022

Topics

History of computingConsumer devices & gadgets
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tomorrow's worldbbc archive1979mobile phoneretro tech

What people said

O__________O · 2022-10 · Reference

Some of the predictions show got right: [LINK] _______________ Example episodes from UK show Tomorrow’s World: - Mobile Phone (1979) [VIDEO] - Office of the Future (1969) [LINK] - Home Computer (1967) [LINK] _______________ Related Wikipedia page: [LINK]

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123pie123 · 2021-04 · Reference

Anyone from the UK who remembers the TV program "Tomorrows World", is wise to predicting the future! They kind of predicted a few things right-ish [VIDEO] Although I think the technology that exists now is much better than what I thought it would be like as a kid. Except for flying cars, I still want one

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tim333 · 2019-06 · Reference

It's debatable if this is AI but basically it looks at all the moves you can make then all the responses an opponent can make and then what you can do back etc. and attaches scores based on pieces taken and the positions. And then goes with the best score. Conventional chess programs use a similar algorithm and ones like AlphaZero are similar except they use machine learning and neural nets to judge how good positions are rather than a simple point score system. I remember trying to write a similar one after seeing the algorithm explained on the TV show Tomorrow's World, around 1980. (Here they are explaining the cutting edge of mobile phones in the day [VIDEO] )

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Sources

Video by BBC, played through YouTube.

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