About this catalogue
What it is
Old Interfaces is a catalogue of fourteen machines people used to press, type on, dial and drag between the 1960s and 2000. Nothing is for sale. Every item switches on: the screens are small programs running in your browser, and the story of each machine is told inside its own interface, in a README file, a text message, a teletext page or a voice on a tape.
The machines are fictional and carry no real brand. Each one is a composite of its era: the right screen size, the right font, the right behaviour, the right annoyances. Where a real machine did something differently, the catalogue copy says what was typical rather than naming a model.
How it's made
The devices are drawn in code as vector pictures, lit like a studio photograph. The screens are drawn dot by dot: the command line uses an 8-by-16 text-mode font, the phone, pager and organiser use a 5-by-7 dot-matrix font built into this site, the teletext pages use a font made from the original teletext character generator, and the one-bit desktop draws its own grey from black and white checks.
Sounds are made on the spot by your browser: square-wave beeps, filtered noise for keys and print heads, the tones of a modem. The answering machine reads its messages with your browser's built-in speech voice, with captions underneath.
Sources
Facts in the catalogue copy were checked in a separate pass against encyclopedias, museum collections and the histories written by people who were there. The full list with links is in the project notes; the main threads were the history of text messaging and the 160-character limit, the history of paging, the first bulletin board in Chicago in 1978, the teletext standard and its history in Britain, the first website at CERN in 1991, and the design of text modes and one-bit desktops.
Fonts
- Text-mode font: “Web437 ACM VGA 8x16” from The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack by VileR, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Converted to WOFF2, otherwise unchanged.
- Teletext font: Bedstead by Ben Harris, public domain.
- Terminal font: VT323 by Peter Hull; printer font: Cousine by Steve Matteson; both SIL Open Font License.
- Catalogue type: Schibsted Grotesk and Victor Mono, SIL Open Font License.
- Dot-matrix font: drawn for this site.
The items
- A Office computer with a command line 1988
- B Desktop computer with windows and a mouse 1986
- C Candybar mobile phone 2000
- D Alphanumeric pager 1995
- E Teleprinter terminal with paper tape 1967
- F Green-screen terminal with a modem 1985
- G Television with teletext 1982
- H Pocket organiser with a stylus 1998
- I Answering machine with two tapes 1991
- J Home computer with a web browser and modem 1996
- K Home computer with a cassette deck 1984
- L Video recorder with a timer 1990
- M Teaching oscilloscope with a signal generator 1975
- N Pocket LCD game with a clock 1981