Digital Domesday Book Lasts 15 Years, Not 1000

From the Guardian, with thanks to Metafilter:

It was meant to be a showcase for Britain\’s electronic prowess – a computer-based, multimedia version of the Domesday Book. But 16 years after it was created, the £2.5 million BBC Domesday Project has achieved an unexpected and unwelcome status: it is now unreadable.
The special computers developed to play the 12in video discs of text, photographs, maps and archive footage of British life are – quite simply – obsolete.

More. As Metafilter\’s commentators have pointed out, this article may be overstating the problem.