Amos, Mr Wilks And A Computer...

Thanks to Bill Sands for supplying the photograph.

The 1980s were an exciting era for technology. Microwave ovens and video recorders became affordable; the Walkman, invented in 1979, came out of Japan in 1980; the first compact discs were released in 1982 and the first mobile phone was unveiled in America in 1983; the ZX Spectrum was invented and released in 1982 - creating great interest in home computing; the Apple Mac burst upon us in 1984 - with the first affordable computer mouse; the World Wide Web was invented in 1989... and most of us poor saps didn't know ARPANET from Nouvelle Cuisine.

In Beckindale, Barbara Peters happily clonked away on an electronic typewriter without a computer in sight in the NY Estates Home Farm office of 1983.

Her successor as Alan Turner's secretary, Mrs Caroline Bates, was tucked away in a corner with a computer which resembled a microwave oven.

Late in the decade, Amos and Mr Wilks acquired a computer at the Woolpack (they'd already had terrible trouble with an electronic till in 1986 - but some people never learn!).

Does anybody have more details of what was probably a fun Woolpack storyline? It's hard to imagine the 1980s world of computing now - I viewed the whole emerging computer "thing" as a passing fad back then - and remember, the World Wide Web was not even invented until 1989, and not up and running until the early 1990s.

Was the Woolpack computer bought for Amos to use as a word processor - a cutting edge piece of technology for writing his very excellent contributions to the Hotten Courier?

If anybody has details of the Amos and Mr Wilks computer storyline, please get in touch!

More about the invention of the World Wide Web here.