[jgrahamc]

There was another way of getting programs from the TV used at the same time. A lightpen was attached to the TV screen and a flashing white square in the bottom right corner of the screen was used to transmit a program (a binary stream) through the lightpen and onto the micro.

Does anyone else remember this and on which program it was done? It may well have been Channel 4's Me and My Micro in about 1985.

Ah. This person says it was '4 Computer Buffs': http://www.tvcream.co.uk/?p=2347 Found it. Here's a video of how you had to make the 'receiver' for this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=89458723914479030 and here's an interview where there's the software being transmitted at the same time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULGDTtGZcN0

[andyjohnson0]

As an aside, during the 80s the BBC and some other European broadcasters also transmitted software over the radio using BASICODE [1]. I remember taping some of the transmissions, though I can't remember now whether I got any of them to load into whatever computer I had at the time.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASICODE

[follower]

"Programming through the screen" is still used today: http://www.aniomagic.com/sparkle/

[andyjohnson0]

I wonder if you could use this technique to transmit data to a phone via its camera?