Minitel, France's precursor to the Web, to go dark 30/6/12

Minitel, France's precursor to the Web, to go dark 30/6/12(arstechnica.com)

140 points by ra5cal 13 years ago | 32 comments

gioele 13 years ago |

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 13 years ago | |

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 13 years ago | | |

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...

rbanffy 13 years ago | |

> and died due to where it failed: by its centralization

It's not like you couldn't dial a private server. Due to the popularity of minitel terminals in Brazil (compared to personal computers with modems) many BBSs supported minitel terminals.

mjwalshe 13 years ago | | |

i think FIDO and manyother BBS's suported videotext modes

PierreA 13 years ago |

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 13 years ago | |

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).

rbanffy 13 years ago |

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.

alx 13 years ago |

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...

rbanffy 13 years ago |

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.

mik4el 13 years ago |

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 13 years ago | |

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 13 years ago | | |

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.

mik4el 13 years ago | | |

yeah weather forcasts must be great compared to e.g. a newspaper but inferior to a computer of course. Simple internet machines have a clear place in society, thats been shown again and again from minitel to cheap mobile phones in the third world...

Aloisius 13 years ago |

How was Minitel different from BBSes in the 80s?

jordanb 13 years ago | |

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 13 years ago | | |

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.

julienchastang 13 years ago | |

One way it may have differed is commercially. The Minitel was a huge economic success generating > $1 billion/year of revenue and presaged the online commerce we see today. Monetization was a piece of cake as "sites" charged per minute. Companies like La Redoute made tons of money selling stuff "online". And, of course, there was plenty of porn. I still remember the suggestive billboard ads for the 3615 CUM -- or something like that.

hollerith 13 years ago | |

it was run by the French government. And the hardware needed to access it was given away -- no general-purpose computer needed. And it achieved much higher penetration into the non-technical demographic than bbses ever did.

mrb 13 years ago | | |

That's right. You could go to any post office, and they would give you a Minitel, for free. The main use of the Minitel was as a digital phonebook, that's why PTT (Poste, Téléphone et Télécommunications) was made responsible for distributing them. My dad still has one.

masklinn 13 years ago | |

It was more about commercial services, and it provided integrated billing (users would get billed on their phone line, each site would set its time-based billing)

dr42 13 years ago | |

It was similar to compuserv (CIS) back then.

barrynolan 13 years ago |

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.

adg001 13 years ago |

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

kleim 13 years ago |

Some astounding figures about Minitel in the beginning of this other article: 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."

zwieback 13 years ago |

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 13 years ago | |

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

ams6110 13 years ago |

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

Wilya 13 years ago | |

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

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

Axsuul 13 years ago |

Are these people considered the "laggards"?

stretchwithme 13 years ago |

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

kahawe 13 years ago |

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&...