Peter Armstrong,

The Domesday Project had its origins in 1983 when, with the 900^th anniversary of the original Domesday Book approaching, Peter Armstrong of the BBC conceived the idea of a 20^th Century version that would catalogue life in the UK but would use multimedia instead of paper.  The resulting digital resource was compiled with input from hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, a team of 60 researchers from the BBC and a vast number of other scholars, statisticians and photographers from the across the UK.

The Twentieth Century Domesday ‘book’ comprised two Laservision discs were used with a modified BBC microcomputer and was designed to be used by novice users.  Unfortunately, by the time it was published, the price had risen to around £400 and it was perceived as overpriced.  But, twenty years on “ BBC Domesday is viewed in a very different light. It is seen as [a] masterpiece of design and organisation, and a landmark in the development of multimedia that failed only because it was way ahead of its time.” (Wheatley, 2004).

Armstrong P and Tibbetts, M (1986) Domesday videodisc user guide, London, BBC Publications.

Barbour, R. (1990) Enhancing the BBC Domesday videodisc as a learning environment for New Zealand secondary schools British Journal of Educational Technology 21, 2. pp 142-143.