

Minitel, France's precursor to the Web, to go dark 30/6/12 - ra5cal
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/minitel-frances-precursor-to-the-web-to-go-dark-on-june-30/

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gioele
Nostalgia aside, the most important part of the (scarce) article is

> “The Minitel was innovative for about 20 minutes, and died due to where it
> failed: by its centralization that never allowed it to evolve
> technologically: because it was under the control of France Telecom, for
> whom that control translated into huge profits.”

> “It is true that the Minitel taught French people how to use a keyboard and
> how to connect to online services,” he added. “But it taught them the
> opposite of what is the most important lesson about the Internet: its
> universality, and the decentralized character of its architecture.”

> Zimmerman now worries that legislative efforts to restrict the Internet will
> be similar to a “return to the Minitel”—in other words, a walled garden
> where many Internet users don’t stray beyond sites like Google or Facebook.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
I think 20 minutes understates it quite a lot. The first Minitels were
introduced in the late 1970s, which is pretty early for a digital data service
used by the mass market.

~~~
gaius
Exactly. You would think from the derision around the Web today, that they
had, back in the 70s, smartphones and AJAX and Google and blah, blah but they
chose to use dial-up terminals, because they were stupid...

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PierreA
I remember that the original idea was to create white/yellow page online (it
was very costly to print all these white pages). Then came commercial
services. You were billed according to the number you dialed (from free -3613-
to very expensive service -3617-). That was my first online experience and
that was magic :-) There was also a hacking scene on pirated servers where you
can meet a lot of people (and it was on the free number of course).

~~~
kleim
Part of the huge prices is explained by the fact terminals were subzidized.
IIIRC their real cost was around 1000 FRF but were nearly given for free. This
is the economic model that is still used by all mobile phones operators in
France nowadays (except for Free Mobile).

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rbanffy
The Facebook image is ridiculous :-P Minitel terminals couldn't do
proportional fonts, were 40 column by, IIRC, 24 lines and could do color.
Graphics were done with a TRS-80-like 2x3 matrix blocks.

If you are going to fake something, at least do it right.

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alx
There're still fun hacks to do with minitel, like this webcam extension for
example: [http://tetalab.org/blog/update-webcam-pour-
minitel-%C3%A7a-m...](http://tetalab.org/blog/update-webcam-pour-
minitel-%C3%A7a-manquait)

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rbanffy
By 85 or so, it was already very clear to me the most useful peripheral for my
Apple II was neither the printer nor the floppy, but the 1200/75 modem.

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mik4el
As I understand most that still use their Minitels use them as a digital
phonebook next to their old phones. I mean, If you have inputed tons of
numbers in to any device and it works reasonably you won't change easily.

~~~
kleim
I also heard many farmers are still using it to trade cattle or watch weather
forecasts of their region. I wonder how they will handle the end of the
Minitel.

~~~
elliottcarlson
They will still have Teletext on their TV's which provides a lot of the same
information (though only one way).

For those not familiar with Teletext, here is an online portal as an example:
<http://www.rtbf.be/services/teletexte/> \- some teletext services even offer
chatting via SMS messages, which then show up on the TV screen.

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Aloisius
How was Minitel different from BBSes in the 80s?

~~~
jordanb
It was a much larger, integrated, nationwide network. It's more comparable to
compu-serv than any BBS.

It also had an integrated terminal that was way cheaper than the microcomputer
+ modem setup you needed to connect to any of the American services or BBSes,
and as a result it had better market penetration in France.

Technically, of course, it wasn't anything special. But it was a great example
of an early online service that was useable for non-technical people.

EDIT: PS: The Computer Chronicles did an episode on Minitel:
<http://archive.org/details/frenchtech1>

~~~
yardie
It had better market penetration because the terminals were free. FTA, they
tried the same service in Ireland, without the subsidies, and market
penetration was nil. It was a dismal failure.

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barrynolan
My first ever job was to demonstrate this to 'enterprisy' land in 1990. It was
unquestionably the future. I would launch dial up, make a connection, and
showed pages which were actually from CEEFAX. I was hailed a boy genius,
neither status which obviously no longer applies.

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adg001
In Italy we had another proto-web videotex computer, called Videotel. Less
widespread than Minitel, still very similar. Its beta dates back to 1981
<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotel>

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kleim
Some astounding figures about Minitel in the beginning of this other article:
[http://owni.fr/2012/06/28/jai-ete-animatrice-de-minitel-
rose...](http://owni.fr/2012/06/28/jai-ete-animatrice-de-minitel-rose/)

Translated from French: "In 2011, 420,000 people 'only' have connected,
against 25 million at its peak. '3615 ULLA', the most famous Minitel sex
service, still totals 21,000 hits a month, against 2 million 10 years ago."

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zwieback
The European online services (MiniTel, BildshirmText, VideoTel (others?)) show
that sometimes innovation can come from crusty, state-run monopolies. I think
the telecoms realized that there was something useful there but ultimately
didn't quite provide what consumers wanted.

None of these projects could have succeeded in the open market at the time but
I give credit to the monopolies for trying.

~~~
mjwalshe
Yes recall people comenting that PRESTEL did amazing things back in the day
when BT was still efectivly a civil service organisation.

PRESTEL was designed in an era where if the female employes got married they
had to leave the company. And there where strict rules about how senior you
had to be before you got a chair with arms

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ams6110
Interesting keyboard layout on the device. Is that a standard layout in
France?

~~~
Wilya
Yep. The azerty[1] layout is pretty much standard in France.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerty>

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Axsuul
Are these people considered the "laggards"?

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stretchwithme
Can't somebody modify these things so they connect to json data sources?

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kahawe
In Austria and Germany the telcos were trying to push a similar technology
called "BTX" ("Bildschirmtext", German for "screen text") or "Vtx" (Videotext)
but it never really caught on and died even faster when the internet came
around. But similar to internet-on-your-TV boxes, there was the "MUPID[1]"
supposed to give you access to BTX on your tv!

I remember when I was in France most roadhouses had minitel terminals which
you could feed with coins, much like phone booths back in the day or internet-
corners nowadays. This was already the time when the internet was slowly
starting to spread over here, at least amongst young geeks and seeing the
minitel still widely in use like that was really weird for me.

[1] [http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1112&...](http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1112&st=1)

