Domesday and the Computer
John Palmer explores the new development of computerising the Domesday day book and what the effects will be.
Although it is perhaps the best known document in our history, there have been many strange notions as to what Domesday Book contains. Medieval peasants believed that its contents were the key to their emancipation from serfdom; Samuel Pepys hoped that it would prove our 'Dominion of the Seas'; and Huckleberry Finn assured his companions that it recorded tales told by a thousand and one of the wives of Henry VIII in their unavailing efforts to save their necks:
He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs... And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one cales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book.
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