BBC Domesday Project (1986) – Nostalgia Central

Nine hundred years after the original 1086 Domesday Book was started, the BBC began the ‘Domesday Project’. Using computer and laser disc technology, one million people were to help compile a ‘picture’ of twentieth-century Britain for future generations to read.

It aimed to capture a snapshot of British life through the eyes of its people, primarily involving volunteers and school children from 9,000 schools across the UK.

The project was divided into two interactive laserdiscs (LV-ROMs):

The Community Disc divided the UK into “D-Blocks” (4km x 3km areas) based on Ordnance Survey grids.

Schoolchildren and local groups contributed 150,000 pages of text and 23,000 photographs describing their daily lives, landmarks, and local issues.

The National Disc featured professional data, including the 1981 census, sets of professional photographs, and “surrogate walks” – early 3-D virtual tours of towns and landmarks. It even included a natural language search system, one of the first of its kind.

Unfortunately, the project relied on highly specialised, expensive hardware, including a BBC Master AIV (Advanced Interactive Video) computer, a Philips VP415 LaserVision player, and a Marconi trackerball.

At launch, the full system cost around £5,000 – equivalent to the price of a small family car – which limited its reach mainly to libraries and universities.

Today, the project is famously cited as a major example of digital obsolescence. While the original 1086 parchment remains readable today, the 1986 digital version became nearly inaccessible within 15 years as the specific laserdisc players and computers required to access it failed.

In 2011, the BBC republished much of the Community Disc content on a dedicated Domesday Reloaded website (now archived at the National Archives).

The original system can still be accessed at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park or the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.