11 October 1984: News stories going back over many years can be retrieved by typing instructions into a telephone-linked computer terminal
From this week, news stories and feature articles printed in the Guardian may be instantly retrieved by electronics. The Guardian is the first
British national newspaper to become available in full text form “on-line”, and the first to be included in Britain’s largest international news and current affairs database, World Reporter.
The Guardian joins an array of international news sources stored electronically by World Reporter which is published by Datasolve Ltd, part of Thorn EMI. The two-year-old service, which was developed in conjunction with the BBC, includes the
Washington Post, the Economist, Associated Press, Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, the
BBC Summary of World Broadcasts and the BBC External Service news.