Ahead of last night’s special episode of EastEnders, BBC Wales took viewers back to 1985 with the return of its Computer Originated World (COW) ident.
The spinning globe was originally created using a piece of equipment called BBC One Symbol Generator Equipment GE6MS/565 which had been sitting in a corner at BBC Wales for the last 10-15 years with a huge label on the front warning that it had failed its PAT test.
Matt Rosser, head of presentation at BBC Wales, came up with the idea of trying to get the COW back up and running for the 40th anniversary and persuaded colleagues David Carnaby, operations engineer, and Mark Davies, senior systems engineer, to give it a go.
“We had this kind of vague idea that one day we’d power it up and see if it worked,” Rosser tells TVBEurope, “but to be honest when people looked at it, they kind of thought, it’s not going to run again.”
In fact, the COW was almost thrown away when BBC Wales moved from its old Broadcasting House to its new building at Central Square, Cardiff. “We had to get rid of huge amounts of old technology, some of it was auctioned off, some of it was disposed of in other ways, but nobody really wanted this COW thing, because it wasn’t needed for broadcast and it didn’t have any value beyond curiosity,” explains Rosser. “I brought it to Central Square in the boot of my car and it’s been hiding in the basement for the last four or five years.”
It’s thought the COW hadn’t been powered up since the last century, owing to the fault with one of the DC outputs. Unlike most of the BBC’s other tech, the power supply design was originally outsourced to a separate entity, while all other parts had been created by BBC R&D. “It’s testament, I think, to the original design of the equipment that after all those years, the globe just started running almost as soon as the supply was fixed,” adds Carnaby.
The trio were helped by the fact that Davies found the COW’s original manual which meant they knew exactly how the globe was supposed to look, but there were still challenges to bringing the COW back to life. “The memory EEPROMs in it were only guaranteed for five to 10 years. Once we’d sorted out the power issue and done a bit of dusting off the grime, the thing just sprang to life. It was a real moment,” continues Rosser.
The trio faced another problem as the COW was designed for 625 PAL analogue output, and BBC Wales’s Cardiff Square is a very modern building. That meant they had to convert the output to SDI. Amazingly, Davies had the piece of kit they needed sitting in his garage at home. “I’d bought it as part of a lot and then didn’t use it and because I can’t throw anything away. I just left it in the garage, so it’s been there for about 10 years,” he explains.
“I brought it in a couple of days ago and left it to come up to temperature. I thought, I hope this works, and luckily, it did. It meant we were able to get the analogue output into a digital format. But then, because Cardiff Square is HD 1080i we needed to put some other equipment on to convert it to 1080i and also to get the picture shape correct because it was a 4:3 device. We were able to change it to 16:9 so that the globe was the correct shape.”
As always, there was an immediate reaction on social media with people wanting to know if the COW was live. BBC One England used a file version from an archive recording, meaning BBC Wales was the only channel to run the globe to air directly from the box as it would have been done back in 1985.
“For a few glorious seconds, that one device was the entirety of BBC One Wales’ output,” states Carnaby.
“For safety reasons last night we had someone standing right next to the box as it was running, just in case it decided to burst into flames!” adds Rosser.
There’s also been what the trio describe as “a steady stream” of people through the electronics workshop at Central Square eager to “see it, touch it, watch it and marvel at the fact that it’s still alive”.
It’s possible that last night might not be a one-off return for the COW. Rosser thinks the actual anniversary of the COW’s debut is next Tuesday (18th February) which was when BBC One launched both EastEnders and Wogan.
“I’m told, there was a rush to get these things built because Michael Grade wanted this to appear on BBC One on that date. The reason it happened last night was more connected with what EastEnders were doing and the fact they were running a flashback programme with their original 1985 titles. I haven’t had a proper conversation yet with David and Mark about whether we can run it again.”
