The idea was to create a British tech showcase: a digital time capsule, a multimedia version of the Domesday Book, showing life in the United Kingdom circa 1986. The original, compiled by Norman monks in 1086, is doing fine, but the $3.6 million BBC Domesday Project is already unreadable. The computers needed to play the 12-inch laser discs are almost extinct. Specialists are working to recover the discs' data.