The Domesday Duplicator (2022)

[b800h]

The BBC Domesday Project has some remarkable content, containing observations on life from an extraordinary range of people at the time it was made. I recently read an entry from a child of the age I would have been at the time, talking about "milk time" (if anyone remembers that) and the school day. It was fascinating.

It was brought back online for a while, but I can't seem to find it, the BBC have archived the page:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/domesday

[dharmab]

It is ironic and tragic that the original Domesday Book has lasted nine centuries and the Domesday Project is struggling to last four decades.

[dharmab]

The name "Domesday" (pronounced like "Doomsday") comes from effort to archive the laserdiscs from the BBC Domesday Project [0], which was a cultural successor to the Domesday Book [1]. The original Domesday Book was a sort of written time capsule of life in 11th century England, and the Domesday project was a digital time capsule of the UK in the mid-1980s. After lapses in archival by the BBC, the Domesday Project is being kept alive by independent volunteer efforts.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

1: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/

[zeristor]

Twenty years ago I asked about the “Doomsday project” in a history newsgroup and was ridiculed, probably lightly, but I didn’t dare post for a year.

I try to be kind online.

[zeristor]

There was a project to digitise the Domesday Book, the thing is it didn’t index by settlement, but by owner.

Which if memory serves made it tricky to search. Is there data in a database form that can be queried?

[rob74]

Thanks for the info! Wouldn't hurt to mention that in the project's README...

[nullindividual]

OP likely found this through this YT video published today:

https://youtu.be/QDlbwl3f39Q?si=dxjm7PZ87srjmnPP

[zeristor]

Not quite, I did a search inspired by Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales podcast, Laser vs Parchment:

https://timharford.com/2023/11/cautionary-tales-laser-versus...

Which contrasted this with the Windrush scandal where the Home Office destroyed the legal documents of people welcomed from the Caribbean in the Sixties, and in their absence started to deport them.

Update: that is an excellent video, setting the context of the problem and walking through the fix. I doubt I would have found it.

[zeristor]

It’s handy to remove the “si” field from YouTube videos, it looks to be tracing.

[qingcharles]

That's a great video.

This hardware is incredible. It's somewhat like the difference between RAW and JPG. We can properly rip LDs now.

[Maxious]

There's a fork of the same software decoder (to be covered in video part 2) that does VHS tape signal instead https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode

[next_xibalba]

Tim Harris just did an episode on this as part of his Cautionary Tales podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cautionary-tales-with-...

Coincidence?

[zeristor]

It prompted me to look up the site, but I found this instead.

[tomcam]

Lovely name. Callback to a slightly older project:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book

[esafak]

More directly, the analog LaserDisc that came with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project