Slashdot Mirror
How a Grandmother Pioneered a Home Shopping Revolution
eionmac writes in with a story about the humble beginnings of an industry that is worth over $186.1 billion in the UK alone. "Grandmother Jane Snowball, 72, sat down in an armchair in her Gateshead home in May 1984, picked up a television remote control and used it to order the groceries from her local supermarket. She was part of a council initiative to help the elderly. What she - and everyone else with her at the time - didn't realise was that her simple shopping list was arguably the world's first home online shop. With her remote control she used a piece of computer technology called Videotex. It sent the order down her phone line to the local Tesco - the goods were then packaged and delivered to her door. Mrs Snowball never saw a computer - her television linked her to the shop. 'What we effectively did was to take a domestic TV in a home and turn it into a computer terminal,' says Michael Aldrich, the man behind the technology for the system. 'That was the big leap.'"
And for fucks sake PRESTEL was far more than a dumb Videotext information service.
This story isn't even news!
Tomorrow, a comparison between carrier pigeons and fiber optics!
(no, we don't need you to link to that joke RFC here)
I have an available online grocery store, but it's a local affair that can't afford decent software for their site, which makes searching/sorting/filtering down to what you want difficult. I can tell it needs a big-money push.
Next steps:
1) Claim as prior art
2) Sue google, amazon, and every other ecommerce retailer out there
3) Make a gazillion dollars
4) Sit at home watching tv, surfing the net, and spending money online
2 bottles of red wine
1 can of whip cream
4 extra large cucumbers
1 can Crisco cooking grease
1 box Trojan condoms
1 package of Marlboro Lights
Would this be like saying that I pioneered a home computing revolution because I bought an Apple ][?
I'm pretty sure this story should be about Michael Aldrich, not one of his users.
...anyone got their grandmother to shop online. :)
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
France had Minitel a few years before since 1978 already.
That's about the silliest thing I've heard today. A television screen, even in 1984, was probably a computer monitor. Granted it was NTSC, but around that time most televisions were switched over to digital tuners (which are computers).
I mean, I'm a computer programmer, and I spend my day working in Visual Studio, vim, and NetBeans (depending on what I'm doing). By that logic, I never see a computer either, at least not the one I'm working on. I spend most of my day in an RDP session on a retired tradeshow 27" iMac. I have to touch xcode once in a while, but I mostly keep it for the real estate.
she ended a loaf of bread
a container of Milk
and a stick of buddah.
Everything is a 'computer'...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-vctzDHAf4
Now being sued by Amazon for 1 click checkout!
I think it's awesome that the grandmother's last name was Snowball. Perfect.
Not my cup of tea but I can see how you would be attracted to all of those wrinkles in her skin. The silvery hair that glistens in the midnight light of the full moon as you walk down to the lake. You take her in your arms so that you can hold her gently, oh her teeth slip out and you know it's time. Her gums feel ever so soft and her jaw creeks softly along with the crickets in the night. Soon you lie down she holds nothing back years of experience and the knowledge that there may not be more ahead give her the uncontrollable desire to go where no one you have touch has gone before. No care just call extenuating bliss. You glide into the night and she caresses you. You wake in the morning dawn the red glow flows across your entangled skin and you stare blissfully across the lake as the sun shimmers and trees blow in the wind.
Seems not so bad really.
Some Granny managed to order groceries online and have them delivered to her place. - And that's something that Amazon and conventional supermarkets are still working on.
bickerdyke
Dates from 1977.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUBE
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Limited deployment in 78, full deployment in 82.
Allowed you to buy all kinds of things (train tickets to porn) in a secure way. Generated higher revenue than the internet into the 90s.
And because the French are the best at one thing: In 1986 French university students coordinated a national strike using Minitel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
For fuck's sake, the grandmother had exactly NOTHING to do with it. There was tons of engineering behind it that made it happen. All the grandmother did was happen to be the first user. She didn't pioneer a DAMN THING.
Next week on Bullshit Modern Journalism: How a Snail that Got Run Over by the Wright Brothers' Airplane on the Runway at Kitty Hawk Ushered in the Era of Modern Aviation.
PS: Dan Brown, I loved (I'll admit it) your first four books, but I thought The Lost Symbol was only OK, and I gave up reading Inferno after just a few chapters. I didn't discover how "The coo of a single dove had changed everything," despite the fact that you mentioned it fifty-eleven times in the first nine pages.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
nice...!
And stop offering the same thing that existed in 1984 as "innovation"... sure, it's much better but no groundbreaking ideas are added.
Best appliance ever, with keyboard pizza key ;)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2008-04-25_Netpliance_i-Opener_pizza_key.jpg
"The i-Opener was a low-cost internet appliance produced by Netpliance (now known as TippingPoint) between the years 1999 and 2002. The hardware, cheaply available, became popular among collectors who modified the appliance to run as a normal PC." source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener
That's one google search I dare not try.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"Just curious." I mean: I hope they had prior art of every amazon patent, right down to the color orange.
"What she - and everyone else with her [in May 1984] - didn't realise was that her simple shopping list was arguably the world's first home online shop. With her remote control she used a piece of computer technology [...]"
Maybe that's why people "didn't realise it was the world's first home online shop". Because they'd actually bothered to check, unlike whoever wrote this article.
Fuck her.
You will need a big bottle of lube and there is a strong possibility that you will also need a shovel. That being said, if she's still around she may like a bit of attention south of the border, so to speak.
And this grandma has been buying useless shit since then, one package at a time. Those dentures she bought really do come handy for her though!
You have a group of tech innovators developing all the components of a system, including enlisting Tesco's cooperation and task-assignment to employees, and the equipment being put into the hand of a 72 year-old woman, with instructions what and how to do. Not even the PR exaggerating is "pioneering".
Hey, how about we make a case that Jesus Christ pioneered the "Iron Cross", made famous by gymnasts and olympic competitors in ages then yet to come!...
The service was provided by the Social Services department of Gateshead MBC based on PRESTEL for housebound OAPs in the borough. The council data processing department (this was pre IT) hosted all the hardware but I'm not convinced that TESCO did the fulfilment. A local bus company at the time used a similar set-up to take bookings for their Newcastle-London Clipper service. I worked on both so this posting brought back some memories of my mainframe days.
I bet she purchased with "One Click"
doh!
Well if Futurama taught me one thing it would be to never trust old ladies because they're fucking evil.
And, hopefully, invalidate a shitload of patents that trolls are currently chasing.
groceries are probably the only thing where it is less efficient to buy online and have delivered than to go to a store.