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Bump but it's not the suspect's number, CAD records the informants number.

Sperry-Univac provided Thames TV with a 'local' version of CAD which was tailored for TV production, as did Memex with their Patriarch product (the Met call this CRIMINT, but patriarch is the product name). I wonder if the reason they switched to powerpoint circa 2003 was for ease or their contracts with SU or Memex had expired.

While procedurally their programmes weren't accurate their backend stuff often was (in fact joked about, they got MetRadio about 2 years before the first boroughs did, they went to IBO (Ops Rooms) in 2007 after CAD rooms were done away with but there was no local control input between 2004 and 2008.

Talking of the technology on The Bill, just seen a 1990 episode where they do a very unrealistic CSI-esque "zoom and enhance" on a CCTV video. 10 years before CSI even existed,

True story: Customer phoned us up at a previous workplace and asked if we could blow up some tiny 2x2 picture to A4 size and be able to see all the hair up somebody's nose (they didn't actually say that but they'd obviously been watching something somewhere where this level of detail was required). Didn't quite seem to get that that only works in the movies and the resulting image in reality would look like an explosion in a Lego factory.

Mind you even CSI take it too far on occasion - a Reddit posts says "using what seems to be the recording from a standard bank camera, they zoom in at least 100x, and see the image of [somebody, presumably the bad guy] in the reflection of the eye of the [victim]."

At least the Bill version was slightly more plausible, the enhanced image was still very blurry, but was just about good enough for them to work out enough resemblance to one of the suspects. Still impossible considering how pixellated it was before the "enhancement" though.

Looked like they were using a Quantel Paintbox to grab the frames from the CCTV video and do the zooming and supposed "enhancements".

The episode in question's here, it's around 17 minutes in:

*pedant* the modern day equivalent would be 020 7515 *pedant*

Incidently Ofcom now publish a list of spare numbers for drama use. 7515 isn't in it so I wonder if that's not a spare number any more
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/numbering/numbers-for-drama

Don't get me started on London STD codes. I live in the old 0181 area and since there's more numbers available, my number is 020 3xxx xxxx rather than a 7 or 8 for the local part of the number.

There are also now telephone numbers that have a 7 in the old 0181 area and 8 in the 0171 area.

No need to get you started when somebody else can do a 16 minute "rant" on it instead that I can conveniently plonk here:

What if TVS was still around in 2020?

Well this will tell us, with a mock news bulletin it broadcast in 1990 with predicted news stories in thirty years time.


(From 2:50)

Hasten to say... they didn't predict much right. The Queen is still alive, there was no pollution crisis twenty years ago that killed off the mackerel, there is no TransWorld airport nor are there 700 seater planes, there is no tunnel linking the South coast with the Isle of Wight, and I'm pretty sure the South will still get to see some snowfall this coming winter.

No raging pandemic either.

That would have been too far fetched

I wouldn't worry, Back To The Future didn't get it right either. Including the "prediction" that you can see on a newspaper in the film that Diana would be Queen, and also Jaws 19 didn't happen either, nor the flying cars, the hoverboards or the self tying laces.

Never mind thirty years into the future, Dame Christopher Peacock’s 1990 bouffant- whilst impressive- was already a throwback to thirty years before that.