Labgear 7026 teletext decoder and related ephemera

Labgear CM 7026 teletext decoder, 1976, made in the earliest days of teletext when hardly any television receivers had a built-in teletext decoder. It consists of a teak-veneered box with a push-button tuner, a corded remote control, and a UHF modulator for connecting the output to the aerial socket of a television receiver. It has its original packing, instruction booklet, and a brief fault-finding guide. When first on the market the retail price was about £475, which was a huge amount in those days. With the demise of the teletext service, to be able to demonstrate it would require equipment capable of generating a UHF signal carrying teletext code across the original teletext standard. Also includes the Broadcast Teletext Specification of 1967, jointly published by the BBC, IBA and BREMA.

In the 1970s broadcasters began experiments to provide interactive services delivered through television signals. This was possible by inserting extra data in the broadcast signal that could then be decoded by devices such as this. Viewers could use a remote control to select from a number of pages, providing news, weather updates, sports scores and more through pages of blocky text. It also allowed closed captioning for programmes, making television accessible for more people.

This decoder was made in the earliest days of teletext, when few television receivers had built-in teletext decoders. It would have sold at a retail of price of £475, which was very expensive for the time. As teletext grew in popularity, more and more televisions were made with built-in teletext decoding capabilities.