Computer Games on Vinyl
A fabulous story (with lots of pictures) at Kempa.com:One strategy that major record companies have been employing lately to deter downloading is adding bonus computer content to new CD releases. I recently discovered that this technique is not unique to CD's, but had in fact been practiced in the vinyl era as well. That's right: there were a handful of records released in the late 70's and early 80's that contained computer programs as part of the audio. This is totally insane, and totally great.
Most of these programs were written for the Sinclair Spectrum home computer series. The Sinclair Spectrum was a relatively cheap home computer system that used a television set as a monitor and loaded programs from tapes. It thrived in England in the early 80's
I don't know if anyone remembers this (and was there any such thing in Australia??), but it's an interesting example of "old media" not being as old, and new media not being as new, as we think.
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