Chris Serle

Ian McNaught-Davis

Gill Nevill

Frank Ash

Matt Boney

It&apos;s Happening Now

In 1982 the BBC started a five year long information technology project. The idea behind The Computer Programme was to introduce people to computers and show how they could be used in offices, homes and schools. This would be followed up by a special project, a specially commissioned BBC computer, one of the most popular computers from Britain. Made by Acorn computers for the BBC.

The first program starts of as a sketch with actor Roy Kinnear playing a salesman. It is notable that only one computer company he mentions still sells computers, Apple.

Broadcaster Chris Serle plays the every-man who knows nothing and he is aided by Ian McNaught-Davis (Mac) an expert whose job is to demystify computers.

Each week Mac would travel to see how humans progressed with technology, in the first episode he shows us how Stonehenge was used to track the movement of the sun so farmers would know the impending seasons.

The Computer Programme was was not all about games. We see a shopkeeper using a computer to do stock taking and keeping up to date with her accounts. Chris goes on Prestel (an early online database) to book an airline ticket.

Journalist Rex Malik would add a cautionary note of the runaway age of information technology ahead of us.

This series was aimed at beginners like me, people who used a computer for the first time at school and pestering their parents to buy one for home so we could play games and learn to programme.

Looking back at it over three decades later, they actually got a lot right. Computers are in every home, but it is not sitting in a corner unused and unloved. We have tablets, laptops, smartphones. We are into social media, playing games, watching movies. We not only book airline tickets but hotels, pay online and then check in on our mobile phones.

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