The following article is from Eastmans Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2003 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the newsletter is available at http://www.RootsForum.com. (brand new site: http://www.eogn.com/) http://www.eogn.com/newsletter/#1986DomesdayProject - U.K. National Archives Rescues 1986 Domesday Project The Domesday book was commissioned in December 1085 by William the Conqueror, who invaded England in 1066. The first draft was completed in August 1086 and contained records for 13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees (the border with Scotland at the time). The result was 35 volumes that listed the identities of the tenants-in-chief (landholders) who held their lands directly from the Crown, and of their tenants and under tenants. For more details about the Domesday Book, look at: http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/story.html Nine hundred years after the Domesday Book was written, the BBC commissioned a new survey. The map of the United Kingdom was divided into rectangles measuring 3km by 4km. A school or group of schools took ownership of each of these rectangles and collected data about it. Typically this consisted of the type of land cover, how many amenities existed, a set of photographs, and up to 20 pages of text. Over 14,000 schools and 2000 other groups were involved in this massive data collection exercise. The BBC Domesday project was completed in 1986. The collection of text and photographs was recorded onto the latest 1986 state-of-the-art storage media: two 12" videodiscs that could be played by using a BBC Master computer connected to a special LV-ROM player. Sadly, not many of those units exist anymore. The contents of these videodiscs have now been put on DVD, and new programs have been written so that PCs can access the data. Interestingly, most of the images and films were not recovered from the videodiscs, but instead were re-digitized from the original analog films at a higher resolution than the videodiscs contained. The curious reader can find more about how this data was recovered and re-recorded on the Public Record Office website at: http://www.pro.gov.uk/about/preservation/digital/domesday/default.htm