VISTA

8.5" X 11"

©
Bill Perry
 Bell Canada

Bell Canada provided me with the blue logo and asked me to layout the words. Easy job, but it was the top page of everything.

I was an Information Provider (IP) to the VISTA Telidon videotex field trial from 1981 to 1985. 

Telidon was a code developed by the Canadian Research Council of the federal Department of Communications, an new way of sending "picture description instructions" to a dumb terminal able to decode the instructions. The code was so superior to what was available in other countries, the DoC thought Telidon could become an international standard, providing Canadian manufacturers with a competitive lead in the videotex marketplace. 

To that end, the federal government put up about $60M, to promote Telidon, asking the private sector to match funds. 23 Telidon field trials were established in private/public partnerships, at least one in every province,in  franco/anglo, rural/urban, residential/business settings with low bandwidth equipment, mostly twisted, paired, copper wires common at the time. Other narrow bandwidths included the Vertical Blanking Interval of television broadcast signal, suitable for "teletext".   

The largest Telidon field trial was VISTA, hosted by Bell Canada and 500 of their VIP business and residential customers in Ontario & Quebec.  Other large trials were Manitoba Telelphone's “Grassroots” with 100 terminals placed in rural homes and offices and Teleguide, claiming 1,200 terminals in public settings such malls or hotels, providing info mostly for tourists. 

Bell Canada administered the VISTA trial, in collaboration with Infomart who ran the central host computer. Infomart was a subsidiary of Torstar and Southam. 

CLICK HERE
to scroll an alphabetical list of Toronto Information Providers to  VISTA

Toronto Information Provides to the VISTA trail

Bank of Montreal
The Bay
British Tourist Authority
Calladine & Baldry
CIBC
Christian Computer Communications
Metro CIC*
Computerese*
Concord Publishing
Consumers Association
Continental Bank
Co-Operators
Dominion Stores
Eatons
Emergency Planning
Encyclopedia Brittanica

Environment Canada
Guaranty Trust
Hemton
Holiday Inns
Iberia Airlines
Infokinetics
Key To Toronto
A E LePage
Mastermind Information Corp
Million$ Magazine
Ministry of Industry & Tourism
Miracle Food Mart

National Museum of Man
Operation Goodnight
Reader’s Digest
Ring Music*
Royal Bank

Royal Insurance
Sears
Simpsons
Standard Life Assurance

Statistics Canada

Studio Esprit
Tanco Information Services
Tele-Direct

Thompson Lightstone & Company
Tip Top Tailors*
Toronto Star

TransCanada Telephone System
Traveltex
TV Ontario
Vu Nasa II

World Book

Hardware for the VISTA field trial was purchased by the DoC, including the following:

500

Electrohome/Sony Triniton Colour TVs adapted for RGB input  


500 

Northern Telecom Telidon terminals aka decoders with keypad.


25 

Norpak Telidon Information Provider Systems (Norpak IPS)

1 

DEC VAX mainframe - not exactly as shown, 

Bell Canada VISTA Telidon Terminal for 500 field trial homes and offices.

Bell placed 500 Northern Telecom Telidon terminals in VIP homes and businesses in their jurisdiction of Ontario and Quebec.The photo on the left is from Bell's VISTA directory. It came with:



This "plug & play" setup was used to access the central VISTA mainframe computer. 

This was the videotex vision of a computer built for one person, nicknamed the single user VAX

 Meanwhile, in a garage in California, two Steves were peddling a more powerful "personal computer at less than 1/10th the price.

Bell also placed 25 $25K Norpak Information Systems, in private businesses or facilities open to the public, such as the Bell Demo Centre in Yorkville. 

One of these 300 lb computers unexpectedly landed in my living room, which, IMO, changed the course of Canadian media art history.

The Norpak IPS was built on a rack mounted, Digial Equipment Corporation PDP1103 with dual 8" floppy disk drives, running the RT11 OS. A Telidon decoder was added to the rack hanging from under the desk. The computer had dual monitors, one for system menu and one for graphics. It also came with a wonky graphics tablet. It came with its own chair. All in, it weighed close to 300 pounds.

This computer became the workhorse of the short lived Telidon/videotex industry. Others were working on replacing the DEC computer personal computers, especially  Apple, including:

Ernest Change and David Godfrey at the University of Victoria built an Apple based Telidon work station.

Les Titze consulted with Apple & Norpak who issued a Telidon decoder on a card to plug into the Apple circuit board. I never met anyone who used the Norpak/Apple decoder, it was late to the game.