BBC 1 1985
A Computer Originated World

When Michael Grade took over as controller of BBC 1 in September 1984, he inherited two projects already in motion.

The first was the creation of a new virtual globe symbol for the channel, although early development had been hindered by a limited supply of memory chips and achieving a full revolution of the world had been a challenge. These obstacles, however, were soon overcome.

The second project was EastEnders - a new prime-time soap opera to rival ITV's Coronation Street.

Grade knew he had to arrest the flagging ratings on his channel and decided to delay the launch of the show to coincide with an overhaul of the programme schedule where EastEnders would go out on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7pm while Terry Wogan would lead the evening line-up on the other weekdays with a new chat show.

The modern, redesigned golden globe, accompanied by a clock and programme slides, were all part of this relaunch of BBC 1.

Viewers would see the new globe for the first time at 7pm on Monday, February 18th, 1985 to introduce Wogan.

The device that made the earth move came in a metal box that would have been mounted in a rack together with a similar-looking box responsible for generating the station clock. You can see examples of both here.

With the cover removed, you can see the memory cards inside. On the left there are ten cards containing the map data pre-rendered as frames of animation.

To the right of these cards are five unused slots and to the right of those is a card with a red handle, the processor card. The remaining four cards contain the two images pictured below.

Now we can begin to see how the globe player works. The transparent blue sphere representing the ocean is the background image. The processor uses the map data to decide for each pixel whether to leave it as the sea or overlay a pixel from the golden sphere for the land or simply plot a black pixel to represent the land on the other side of the world.

The player can also generate a test image that demonstrates some of the video mixer's abilities, including what the ocean globe looks like with the land. If you look closely, you can see that the golden shell is slightly larger than the blue sphere, so that the land has the subtle effect of floating over the top of the ocean as it rotates.

The globe players for Scotland and Northern Ireland were discovered at the BBC Research & Development site at Kingswood Warren (sadly now closed) and were rescued from being tipped. By cannibalising parts from each machine, engineers there managed to make one working machine, from which we got some of the images you see above.

The globe player for Wales remained in Cardiff, and in February 2025 it too was brought back to life, which means we get another chance to look inside this fascinating box of tricks...

Inside the BBC, the globe was known as the COW, an acronym for computer-originated world. You can see this written vertically on the yellow label on the left.

When the bottom cover is opened, you can see the removable memory cards inside the device.

The reason for the globe player in Cardiff being revived was that the BBC wanted to do something special to tie in with an EastEnders storyline that would mark the show's 40th birthday. The original opening title sequence was brought back and each nation introduced the programme with its golden globe symbol.

But while the rest of the UK saw an archive recording of the globe, in Wales, viewers saw the globe generated live by the original device, just as they would have done in February 1985. This time, however, the globe player's output was enhanced to upscale the standard-definition 4:3 picture into a high-definition widescreen image.