Tomorrow’s World, one of the BBC’s original flagship programmes, has been uploaded to the web legally for the first time. The classic scientific show which was broadcast from 1965 to 2003 now has 23 clips available online for viewers to rediscover.
Featuring future technologies, Tomorrow’s World wasn’t always correct in its predictions. However, a variety of future forecasts were proved true with Teletext, CD Players and camcorders all making their way into the consumer market. Along with other clips from the BBC’s 70 years of broadcasting, clips ranging from only a few minutes to an hour’s content can now be viewed at www.bbc.co.uk/archive/collection.
Previous presenter of the famous show, Maggie Philbin wrote about the newly available content of Tomorrow’s World. “The home computer, the mobile telephone and the compact disc all made their debut on the show,” she said, adding “I would love to say I recognised their significance immediately but often the technology was fragile or incomplete – a mixture of space age and Stone Age – and the real potential was hidden.”
Meanwhile the BBC said that the content that they had uploaded would show viewers how technological predictions were proved, and also came to nothing. In particular they mentioned the every day modern computer saying “In this collection, we witness a change in how people thought of the future and chart the rise and rise of the computer.”
