Blue Peter winner says he ‘would have been price some huge cash’
- Steven Bostock designed a flat television with internet for the show in 1974
It is only relatively recently that internet-enabled Smart TVs have overturned the traditional role of the television set.
But our living rooms may have looked very different had an 11-year-old boy’s entry to a Blue Peter competition been taken seriously back in 1974.
Steven Bostock, who was featured on the BBC children’s show fifty years ago, entered the contest with what appeared to be a flat-screen TV with internet connection.
Mr Bostock, who is from Pleasley in Derbyshire, admitted he wished he had patented his winning entry as he would have been a ‘lot richer than I am now’.
He designed the flat television, complete with its own communication set-up, for the Blue Peter 2000 competition.
Steven Bostock (pictured) who was featured on the BBC children’s show fifty years ago, entered the contest with what appeared to be a flat-screen TV with internet connection
He designed the flat television, complete with its own communication set-up, for the Blue Peter 2000 competition
His TV could be watched on both sides with people wearing earplugs.
Speaking to the BBC News website, the kitchen and bedroom designer, said he probably would have been ‘worth a lot of money’.
Mr Bostock’s entry was chosen from 135,259 pictures of how life might look in the future.
He explained the inspiration for his design to the BBC, saying: ‘I was just looking at the television we’d got at the time and it’d come on since the one we had a few years earlier, so things were obviously moving on.
‘I had forgotten about all the communication system on the top which is the internet.’
Mr Bostock’s entry was chosen from 135,259 pictures of how life might look in the future
He added: ‘I couldn’t believe it when it was announced. Once I got back to school, I kept quiet about it, but all my friends had seen it.’
The press were invited into his school, he said, while he was ‘celebrity for the week’.
Mr Bostock, who at the time lived in Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, kept the signed photos of the Blue Peter presenters along with his prize that he won at the time.
Other successful entrants in the competition included a machine that would blow clouds into areas that were affected by drought and another design that worked as both a dishwater and a recycler.
According to the BBC report the prizes included ‘space age’ alarm clocks, an intercom set and a ‘futuristic radio’.
