Wright Chatter History

Wright Chatter started in about 1989 on the viewdata service Micronet 800, which was a part of the Prestel service owned by BT.

Viewdata had the same appearance as the teletext service that you could get on the now defunct UHF television service, but it was a teletext type service and a whole lot more, with users very much interacting with each other via email and other communication facilities, but the main feature for us home computer enthusiasts was the various computer related components that dealt solely with your computer type, bringing you up to the minute news and views of happenings of your chosen computer, which in those days included the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, BBC Model B, Commodore 64 and some others.

Part of Micronet 800's products included an area of their system called 'The Gallery', where users had a total of 26 teletext pages or frames. It was on Micronet 800's Gallery that Wright Chatter first appeared. 'The Gallery' had many different publishers bringing many different subjects to their readers. Micronet 800 closed in 1991 and I moved over to another viewdata service by the name of The Silicon Village who greatly expanded 'The Gallery', allowing users many more pages.

The Internet was starting to gain popularity in the mid-1990s and I wrote my last Wright Chatter at this time on subscribing to an Internet service. Then in 2012 whilst helping a blogger start up their blogging site I relaunched Wright Chatter as a blog, not with the same frequency of updates as previously but occasional posts when something interesting comes along.

Now we have real pictures, no restrictions as to number of characters that can be used, we can include video, and much more. Despite all this I wish I had some of the postings from those early days, if anyone out there does by chance have any of the original Wright Chatter on disc or even printed on paper please do let me know, I'd love to be able to upload some of the original content of Wright Chatter from all those years ago.

If you find any content of Wright Chatter interesting or you have any comments to make about same please do make contact.

Jeff Wright
Updated 7th June 2015

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