In the 1970s, few people anticipated that personal computers would become the powerful, widely available devices we know today, let alone foresaw the impact of the Internet. Still, officials at Canada’s Department of Communications (DoC) were convinced that society was heading towards a revolutionary change—an “information society” based on computers and databases—in which information would be a valuable commodity, and information technology would drive economic growth. Long before the explosion of the Internet in the 1990s, telecommunications specialists envisioned the potential of “videotex.” DoC officials saw the potential for Canadians and Canadian industry to play an active role in this innovation.

The Telidon system allowed consumers to receive information at home many years before the Internet. (CSTM trade literature collection)

Telidon was first and foremost a graphics standard—a means of using computers to create and display visual material. Telidon videotex was envisioned as a “mass market” service in which sophisticated graphics would be key in making computer data more attractive and useful to non-technical users. Initially, Telidon pages were provided through users’ televisions. Before long, manufacturers were offering users three hardware options: a decoder and keypad for a colour television, a circuit board for personal computers such as the Apple II, or a special purpose terminal consisting of a keyboard, decoder and monitor such as the VTX202 (850378), built by Microtel Pacific Research in Burnaby, B.C. Users connected to remote databases via telephone lines or television cable. Telidon provided superior image quality, and made more efficient use of expensive computer memory and transmission capacity.

Although technically innovative, Telidon was not widely embraced by Canadians, and no companies implemented Telidon as part of a commercial videotex service. The public was not interested in paying for these types of services until they could obtain information not readily available through existing media. In addition, information providers would not risk the cost of setting up a database until they could see a public demand for it. Today, however, the Internet has proven Telidon’s contention that ordinary people would one day be willing to use telephone or cable lines to access graphically rich information stored on remote computers.