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The Internet Technology

Minitel Hits Twenty 244

Posted by michael from the antiques dept.
An anonymous submitter writes "Minitel is now 20 years old, according to this article from BBC News: 'Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off. Unlike the internet, Minitel is a closed network, based on the phone system of its owner, France Telecom. Using one of its prehistoric-seeming terminals, users can access a labyrinth of proprietary content, all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed.' Slashdot has reported on Minitel before."
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Minitel Hits Twenty More

Minitel Hits Twenty

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  • Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off. ... all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed.

    All right, aspiring web developers and disgruntled dot-bomb employees. Your objective today is to modernize this archaic service: develop a functional implementation of Flash and JavaScript pop-under advertisements, then ensure that all original content is publicly inaccessible. Finally, schedule a decadent yacht party. We're going to party like it's 1999!

    • Re:Business Models or "Developers, developers!" (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed.

      I assume whoever wrote this never used Minitel, the darn thing is designed to keep you on line as long as possible so France Telecom can rake in more money

      • America Online (Score:2, Funny)

        by Scoria ( 264473 ) *
        I assume whoever wrote this never used Minitel, the darn thing is designed to keep you on line as long as possible so France Telecom can rake in more money

        Many citizens of the United States refer to this service as "America Online." :-)

    • Re:Business Models or "Developers, developers!" (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch

      A stretch of about 30 years. The internet is 1.5 times the age of minitel.
      • Yes, it was a dumb mistake on the author's part, exposed to all the ravenous non-believers. He is talking about the internet as we know it now, a functional forerunner of the internet as far as the position it takes in a lot of people's daily lives. 20 years ago, regular Frenchies turned to Minitel for various information like everyone else does with the internet today. If you think ARPAnet was something any schmuck could dial-in to with his modem and get the weather and news- especially 30 years ago- you've got another thing coming to you... :P

        • I don't know quite where you'd find the news or weather, but dialing into the ARPANET 30 years ago was just a matter of knowing the phone number and having a terminal and modem. There was no security on the TAC (terminal access controller, what might be called a "modem pool"). There were a couple systems at MIT that allowed guest access, and if you managed to connect there you could request an account and most likely get it.

          Open TACs and systems with guest accounts existed into the early 80s, when a few

  • Vintage (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Paddyish ( 612430 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:04AM (#5953766)
    The article mentions that the service was at its peak in 1997...not bad for (then) 14-year-old technology.

    What kind of taxes are levied against Minitel transactions, pray tell?

  • Darpanet? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by haz-mat ( 8531 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:08AM (#5953792)
    'Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off'

    What about Darpanet? Isn't that the true proto-internet given that it predates minitel and was a much larger network and, oh yeah, formed the backbone of the internet?
    • Hey, these are the French. It it didn't happen in France, it didn't happen.

    • Re:Darpanet? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Vollernurd ( 232458 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:17AM (#5953855)
      Not quite - Minitel was used in homes from the start. Darpanet was, as it's name states, used purely for Defence and Academic applications. The WWW was not around until 1992. Or something.

      • Re:Darpanet? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by haz-mat ( 8531 )
        Recall though, that the WWW and the Internet are two distinct things. They happen to overlap and to some extent are the same thing now but they weren't originally. I do see your point, though, that minitel is interesting because it was reg'lar folks compared to the academicians and spooks and defense wonks that ran Darpanet; however, it seems apparent that the Internet really sprang and evolved out of Darpanet where as Minitel is still running a somewhat, how shall I put this, archaic system. I find it hard

      • Re:Darpanet? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:51AM (#5954148)
        This is true, however the Internet really did grow out of ARPAnet. The one big important thing to notice is the protocol it uses (TCP/IP) and the way it works (layered approach, interconnictivity across multiple platforms and lines). From what I gather on this Mintel is a closed system, that works based on a special kind of terminal and only uses modems for its communication.

        Well the revolutionary thing about the Internet, that allowed it to grow so large, was not the idea of connecting computers together. You already had plenty of that, universities would have many system that would talk through serial or something like it, and you could dial into little mini-networks in the form of BBSes. The revolutionary thing was that it was all open and interoperable and could be made to work with anything on anything through anything.

        You can dial in to an ISP with a modem using a Mac, he can connectot to his upstream provider with something archaaic like X.25, that provider can use POS fibre to connect to all his neighbours, who can connect with ATM to their neighbours, who can connect ot another ISP with frame relay, who can connect via DSL to a computer that is running FreeBSD and offering a web page.

        That is what makes it so cool. YOu don't have to have one kind of terminal, you don't have to have one kind of OS, you don't have to have one kind of physical wiring. So long as your unit speakes IP, it is good to go. This made a really diverse network possable, and also ensured its survival. New technologies come out all the time, and they can be used on the Internet. You aren't restricted to one kind of line for transport.

        That's why ARPAnet is the real father of the Internet, because that's where it all started. There were plenty of other closed system like Mintel like, say AOL. You dialed in with modems, talked to a proprietary, closed network. Great, like I said, just a big version of a BBS. With the Internet, all of a sudden you can just connect to a huge decentralized network, and anyone can connect with anything and basically do anything with it. You aren't limited to one kind of interface (like a text terminal), people can invent new apps to communicate and implement them.

    • Re:Darpanet? (Score:5, Informative)

      by joestar ( 225875 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:24AM (#5953915) Homepage
      The difference is that Minitel has been introduced in most French families by the mid-80s (the terminal itself was free and gave free access (for 3 minutes actually) to a few services such as the French white-pages and yellow-pages).

      Regarding technology, the Minitel includes an asymetrical half-duplex modem: 1200 bps in downstream, 75 (!) bps in upsteam. But an interesting particularity was that it could be reversed to get 75/1200 instead of 1200/75.

      The minitel-1 included a 40 columns black & white screen, with an extended charset that was heavily used to simulate graphism!

      Later, faster models were indroduced (9600 bps), including color-screen and 80 columns mode.

      • Re:Darpanet? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by lfourrier ( 209630 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @10:41AM (#5955149)
        minitel 1B is still provided free (when you have one, most are at home for 10 years or more)
        it provides 24*80 chars, and can, with a very cheap adapter, be connected as a console to the serial port of a linux box.
        it make no noise, there is an integrated screen saver, and by using the serial port, you can communicate at 9600, instead of the 75/1200 of the modem.
        the only drawback is the limited keyboard, making it very unpratical to input some keys.

        So, minitel services can die, but long live the (physical) minitel (the one I have since 1990 show no signs of problem)

    • Re:Darpanet? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wwwillem ( 253720 )
      What about Darpanet? Isn't that the true proto-internet given that it predates minitel and was a much larger network and, oh yeah, formed the backbone of the internet?

      All true, but IMHO the big difference is that MiniTel was a network for the public, like Internet today, while Darpa was in the early years mainly academic and military. Anyway, Minitel definitely had the lead in ..... pr0n, xxx, etc. Don't know about "mini-spam", but I presume the French have a different culinary taste, than to prefer those

  • Amazon to sue Minitel? (Score:5, Funny)

    by IainHere ( 536270 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:09AM (#5953797)
    From the article:
    One new venture for example, known as w-HA, is working on a scheme that will allow online payments to be made within two mouse clicks

    Phew! For a second there, I thought they were in trouble.

  • It inspired Al Gore (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:10AM (#5953802)
    "'Calling Minitel a proto-internet may be a bit of a stretch, but it is not far off."

    It has been said that Al Gore saw one of these when he visited Paris, and it inspired him to create the Internet when he got home.

    Thank you, France! For the fries, and now for the 'Net!

  • Internet via Minitel (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:11AM (#5953812) Homepage
    I don't get it. Why not offer web and email access via Minitel (lynx and pine, or equivalent)? It seems that FT have resisted doing this for a long time.
    • Why not offer web and email access via Minitel

      Web was impossible because the Minitel was essentially a text terminal (VT100 IIRC). Graphics were achieved by combining special characters into shapes... and downloads were very slow. Even typing had delays!

      However, e-mails were perfectly possible. But it was up to the company/BBS to provide the service. Some did, although at that time it was cheaper (for somebody in the know :) to dial a regular PC BBS and have the same feature with many improvements, In f
      • Web was impossible because the Minitel was essentially a text terminal (VT100 IIRC).

        Never heard of lynx? Such services were possible and did indeed exist. But, you have to consider the timeframe when they existed: the early nineties, an epoch where Bill Gates still ignored everything about the Internet, and thought the future of interactive multimedia computing was CD ROMs... Thus, most web sites were actually pretty standard compliant (no "Internet-Exploder only" sites, because simply IE did not yet exis

    • Such minitel-to-internet did exist (although not operated by FT itself), I remember using these in the early nineties, when I was studying in France. If I remember correctly, the call name was sth like 3617 USNET. They did indeed run lynx, complete with some nice (unintentional...) shell escapes (hehe!), and you could browse the web from there (or, alternatively, use the shell escape, and then telnet to wherever you wanted... well, if you coped with the strange keyboard mappings...)

      But, given the price the

    • I was in France on business trip 8 years ago and needed access to my email. At the hotel desk I found minitel terminak, and after short exploration I found the service which provided me with telnet access to elm, and tin which I used to check my email and read news. It was little expensive, but it was paid for by my employer.
  • Minitel is trusted not just because it is an integral part of French life, but because its closed network is guaranteed virus-free and hacker-proof

    Both famous last words.

    • Re:What's this button for and.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Minitel is trusted not just because it is an integral part of French life, but because its closed network is guaranteed virus-free and hacker-proof

      Both famous last words.

      That's a rather odd statement, given that 1) the defining characteristic of 'last words' is ensueing death or failure, and 2) these 'famous last words' have now lasted for some 20 years.

      Seriously, 20 years working is a damn good achievement for any IT system, even if it should fall apart tomorrow.

      • Minitel was virus free, because the terminals were essentially dumb terminals. Nothing to infect there.

        However, hackers abunded. People cheated at online games (to gain mucho cash...), abused gateways to other networks (transpac, and yes, the internet), etc. A favorite boast of French hackers was to say "I can hack such and such system from a simple minitel". In a way, the minitel was their vi-phone.

    • Re:What's this button for and.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Draoi ( 99421 ) <draiocht&mac,com> on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @09:02AM (#5954249)
      Prestel (the old UK equivalent) got famously hacked once. There was an old '80s computer show on the Beeb and the presenter was showing off a new fancy feature called 'e-mail'. When he logged in, what he got was this;
      Computer Security Error. Illegal access.

      I hope your television PROGRAMME runs as smoothly as my PROGRAM worked out your passwords!

      As featured in The Hacker's Handbook [undergroundnews.com] of long ago ....

  • Boycott it! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:14AM (#5953832)
    As an proud, God fearing, flag loving American, I hearby announce a US boycott against Minitel to punish France for its general cowardly, frogginess in the Iraqi affair. I will no longer use it to look up phone numbers or get train times.

    Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated.

    BTW, what the hell is an "Illegal Comment"?
  • This is tedius news - other similar (& better, though YMMV) systems, like the UK's Prestel service were invented before this (Prestel was started 24 years ago in the 1970's).

    The difference is, that unlike France's bizzare xenophonic-rooted obsession with the outdated Minitel, other large scale BBS systems have been shutdown because they have been rendered useless after the invention and subsequent uptake of the World Wide Web.

    (ObNote: I used to work at Prestel On Line, the Internet provision arm of Pr
    • France's bizzare xenophonic-rooted obsession with the outdated Minitel
      I am not sure what's xenophobic about that. Oh, maybe your remark is.

      The point of the minitel is that it makes money! Money, money, money! Shall I capitalize it? MONEY!

      You are a TV company and broadcast a stupid game. You want people to phone to register for the game (you make money from phone calls). Can people register through the Web? No. You don't make money from the web (a little from ads, but not enough). You provide a m
      • And IIRC, the making pots of money part was an added extra to Minitel. The reason why France Telecom (then part of the French govt) introduced it was that they worked out it would be cheaper to set up the service and *give* a terminal to all subscribers and then make them do their directory enquiries for free through it than print phone books for the whole population.

        A bit of imagination that British business and the British govt just don't seem to have any more.
      • France's bizzare xenophonic-rooted obsession with the outdated Minitel
        I am not sure what's xenophobic about that. Oh, maybe your remark is.

        Your not that bright then are you?

        It's popular because it's 'home grown', the same way that Amstrad was popular in the UK because it was 'home grown' (regardless of the fact that it was often a poor choice).

        There is no point in being politically correct if it's just an excuse to cover up ignorance, the French are the most protectionist country in Europe which has b
    • Changing the presentation layer doesn't mean large scale BBS systems are useless!

      You are right now using what could be termed as a BBS system right now. Slashdot resembles old style discussion "electronic corkboards". While it's very much true, dialup BBSes are not practical in this day and age, many, depending on 3rd party support for the respective operating system, can be adapted to telnet, which, remarkably enough. An example of how an old style BBS system has been adapted for the 21century, see htt
    • Um, so that's a Troll is it?

      So did the UK not develop Prestel then? [ufl.edu]

      And was it not launched in the 1970's? [cheapest-isp.co.uk]

      And did I not used to work for Prestel? [google.co.uk]

      I'm sorry you seem to have been outsmarted by a search engine.

      I belive the phrase that's apt is something about you being replaceble with a very small shell script...
  • I knew you could. Minitel must be a gold mine of anti-internet-patent prior art.

    Johnny
  • Do you think Minitel may be slowing the rate of Internet takeup in France? I mean, why bother buying a computer when you already have this nice little Minitel terminal that does just about everything you need without any unnecessary complications?
    • "I mean, why bother buying a computer when you already have this nice little Minitel terminal that does just about everything"
      Because it is so expensive!
    • No, because Minitel is crap, Google does not provided a Minitel interface, Minitel is crap, pr0n doesn't look very good on a Minitel system and did I mention Minitel is crap? ;)

      Seriously though I'm not trolling, but Minitel wasn't even best of breed (let alone first to market) when it was released.

      With this in mind, I thinik asking:

      Do you think Minitel may be slowing the rate of Internet takeup in France? I mean, why bother buying a computer when you already have this nice little Minitel terminal that d
    • I'm quite sure it did, but not because people had the terminal.
      Actually, the trouble was at the other end: societies were more prone to offer Minitel services (which was usually for pay) than put a free web page.
    • Actually, I think I first heard about Minitel in Alvin Toffler's Third Wave, where he mentioned that internet acceptance may have suffered in France due to Minitel. I think he used it as an example of "first-mover disadvantage", or the perils of pioneering in new technology. You gotta give the French telecom a lot of credit, though - they sound like they grasped consumer information technology a lot better than AT&T.

  • Minitel? (Score:3, Funny)

    by r00zky ( 622648 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:21AM (#5953887)
    > Minitel is now 20 years old so, what is its webpage? :P
    • minitel [minitel.fr]. Yeah, they offer terminal emulation for your pc though their isp so that you can pay twice for the service.

      Minitel is as a good demonstration of what the world would be without the internet and it's open philosopy. Minitel's intelligence is all in the network, and all of it's publications are tightly controlled by a central authority. They did a fine job, arguably as good as could be done this way. While many useful servcices can be offered, they miss out on the blessings of liberty. Even un

  • Happy birthday Minitel... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stere0 ( 526823 ) <slashdotmail@ste ... u minus language> on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:21AM (#5953889) Homepage

    ...now will you please die?

    The Minitel is an obsolete piece of technology. Yes, it was revolutionary twenty years ago. But it has slowed French innovcation down ever since. The sail has become an anchor.

    Why is the Minitel still in use today? France Telecome still makes a significant profit from the overpriced service and has no intention to give it up. The Minitel's prime use is what we use the interenet for, yellow and white pages.

    The interface isn't simpler, the boxes are ugly and unpractical, the service costs a fortune. I can't see why the Minitel couldn't be replaced by cheap, mass produced computers connected to the internet.

    • No, the real profit center is porn (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rikardon ( 116190 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @09:59AM (#5954758)
      Although directory lookups via Minitel are indeed popular, they're also free (and available via public Minitel terminals at any post office).

      Few on Slashdot will be surprised to hear that the real money-maker (unfortunately, from my POV), is porn. Wherever you go in France you'll see posters that say "3615 {female name}" Entering that code at a Minitel terminal will connect you to the Minitel equivalent of a phone sex line. At least, I think that's what happens. I was in France as a Mormon missionary, so not surprisingly, I never tried it. But posters were literally everywhere, and you'd regularly hear radio ads for 3615 this and 3615 that.

      While there are other uses for a 3615 prefix, cybersex was far and away the use most often advertised.
      • It's only free for the first three minutes (or is it 90 seconds now?). It may not sound much, but it's far sufficient to do a lookup in the directory (be it white or yellow pages), which is the main use most people had for it. Anyway, the directory service has never been really expensive. France Telecom's white pages [pagesblanches.fr] and yellow pages [pagesjaunes.fr] web sites work just as well, now, and are offered for free.

        As for pr0n, you are right that it was an important factor in the adoption of Minitel in France. By the way, the ubi
    • Yes France Telecom still makes a profit off of this obsolete technology, but why would anyone care, they're not forcing anyone to buy one, and there's no exclusive content. I personally don't like FT for many other reasons, but the minitel living on is a non-issue.
  • Minitel is trusted not just because it is an integral part of French life, but because its closed network is guaranteed virus-free and hacker-proof.

    I am *so* moving to France, and won't be answering any questions about where my money comes from.

    • I am *so* moving to France, and won't be answering any questions about where my money comes from.

      While I can say that Paris is a wonderful place, you are not much of a hacker if you have to go there to break into their computers.

  • la french touch (Score:3, Informative)

    by legrandgramgroum ( 673236 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:31AM (#5953967)
    Just to tell you that the picture in the BBC article is somehow a bit out dated and that our french third wonder (after Sophie Marceau and la baguette) has been re-styled with the utmost "french touch" to suit even the highest standards of modern technological societies.

    Here is what is really looks like at this time: http://www.com1.fr/images/ph_atmax_iminitel.jpg

    I wonder if we could boot a linux kernel out of this baby... :)
  • I may be showing my age here... But QSD was great!

  • Hey, they solved the accessibility problem! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ader ( 1402 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:39AM (#5954037) Homepage

    > "...all of it determinedly low-graphics and designed for speed."

    So when will the Internet be upgraded to support the same features?

    Ade_
    /

  • In Spain... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LynXmaN ( 4317 )
    This service was called Ibertex. Required a 300bps modem to enter (lately 2400 were accepted woohooo) and I think it is still working (dial 031 anyone?)

  • Minital was truly a mixed blessing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by newsdee ( 629448 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:46AM (#5954109) Homepage Journal
    Having lived in France during the introduction of the Internet, I remember many details:

    The Minitel is liek a BBS system, except that you got the terminal (screen and keyboard) from the phone company for cheap. There were (now it's declining due to the net) any kind of service that you could image. You thing pop-ups are bad? You haven't seen anything until you've seen a street of Paris filled with posters showing a barely clad woman and advertising some Minitel dating service.

    For me the Minitel shows how even old people can embrace new technology if you make it easy for them. EVERYONE used the minitel, and companies set up Minitel servers before the concept of website was even imagined. We had chatrooms, forums (a la Slashdot) etc. Considering these were billed per minute, and billings varied from $0.2 to $1, it can get very expensive.

    However having the machine at home costed you about $3-4 per month, not much considering what you could get. Most families that I know over there had a minitel, at least for using as a phone book (first 3 minutes of phone book browsing service were free).

    However, it was (is) a real cash cow, so of course when the Net came along France Telecom was very reluctant to move away from this service. Which is a damn shame, because I'm sure they could have made a profit selling "Internet minitels", the same thing except with Internet access... however, with these no company can charge $1/minute, so, the move was not popular with companies either. There were some Internet phones, but at $500, they failed miserably.

    Today I wish the service a quick death, because there's really nothing left there that cannot be done faster and more comfortably through the Internet (max connection speed for the minitel was, IIRC, 9600 bps, and only for some servers!). And you can recycle the devices: there's a lot of documentation of how the teletext terminal work, so you can easily hook up a network of those for whatever you want.

    France was an innovator back then, but because they latched on their own system and failed to adapt, they were slow in adopting the Internet. The new generation, however, having grown up with minitel technology, was very quick to jump into the Net train. As a matter of fact, many French free webhosting services were created by guys who ran free BBS or inexpensive (the phone company always made money) Minitel servers back in the day! :)

    • I think we on the Net really need to learn perspective. How do we expect to accomplish anything if every step forward is viewed as archaic compared to advanced technologies that develop decades later.

      By this measure the Wright brothers shouldn't have really bothered developing that crude kite with a lawnmower engine, The P-57 mustang that came out 40 years later would leave it in the dust.

      Oh and forget that whole Cat-Scan thing. We had MRI machines 10 years later, and they allowed us to see soft tissue

      • The Minitel was not archaic *back then*. It was progress, and an interesting social experiment.

        For example it shows that whoever says that "maturing people have difficulty grasping new technology" is speaking out of his/her ass, since the Minitel was used by senior citizens, and they loved it (still today!), showing that it's not the technology itself that is the problem, but the required learning curve.

        However, the thing is that 20 years later companies/organizations/government offer some services via Mi
    • Hmmm... seem to remember that some 'comm' program (that's what we called them then) that I used back in the BBS days had Minitel emulation.

      I can't remember the name of it now, though. Was it maybe Telix? (I seem to remember this was produced by a French company)

  • Serious question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:46AM (#5954111)
    Does Minitel suffer from spam messages and pop-up ads, or has it avoided the plagues of the Internet?

    • Re:Serious answer (Score:3, Informative)

      by newsdee ( 629448 )
      The "pop-ups" were posters that popped up in almost every streetcorner in France. Minitel access was obtained by dialing "361x" and a code (x, ranging from cheaper to more expensive, went usually from 2 to 8).

      Most of these posters were for dating chat rooms. One of the most famous was even named "3615 cum". And that's not even a "porn" chatroom (there were, but usually were "3617").

      As for spam, it was in form of "snail" mail. Fortunately, there is in France regulation that allows consumers to opt-out from

  • porn on minitel (Score:5, Funny)

    by lovebyte ( 81275 ) <lovebyte2000@gma ... minus physicist> on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:54AM (#5954178) Homepage
    In the mid 80's I used to work during the summer in a bank in France. When suddenly all the computers went dead. No more network. The reason for this was that the minitel and the bank network were using the same lines and the minitel suddenly had a surge in communication. Why ? Because the first "minitel rose" services had appeared. The minitel rose was some rather expensive porn chat services and they became very popular.
    So there you go. Internet, minitel, same thing.

    Plus ca change, plus c'est pareil.

  • What about BBSes? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron@hotmail. c o m> on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @08:55AM (#5954184) Homepage
    The article seems to imply that prior to the internet, none but the Frenchies had this kind of information service available to them. I dunno about anyone else here, but for me, the functional forerunner of the internet, and what I used well into 1999 (even though I started using the internet around 1991) were BBSes. There were also paid information services like PC-Link, Apple's eWorld, CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL... some being around since the early 80s, other latercomers.

    Of course, the percentage of American households calling up these BBSes and commercial ISes was probably lower than households which use their Minitel box with any sort of regularity, but I just felt the need to point out another thing that served as a functionally proto-internet.
    • In fact, Minitel and BBSs have quite a bit in common. The striking difference is that most BBSes were single-tasking (only one connection at a time) and many of them were not networked. So, they were local phenomena, since nobody wanted to incur the cost of long-distance phone calls.

      The Minitel, in contrast, was/is centralized (like many things in France), thus commercially viable, long before the Internet got there.

      The French, by the way, were ahead in many things. They had their fast train TGV (train a
      • Quite the contrary- a lot of BBSes were multi-user and networked. The boards I used to call and the one I ran were all single-user, single-modem, but that was a matter of preference. (the BBS software I very much preferred- Citadel 86 represent! - only supported one user at a time) A lot of these big, multi-line boards were popular, supporting live chat and a lot of file transfers.

        Question for anyone: does Minitel support user forums, message boards and/or live chats ala irc?

        I'm not doing anything as abs
    • As the other poster stated, most BBSes were single-user and not networked together. Those that were 'networked' usually were just message networked.

      The best comparison is to the old VideoTel network that was in the late 80s/early 90s. The machines used were dedicated cheap terminals that a person could buy and then with a subscription, access the videotel network which was a collection of BBSes and services around the country.

      They used a special modem (I think it was a 1200 baud, but it couldn't connecte

      • mmmm Fidonet.

        We had some terminals like that at the Twin Cities Freenet [tcfreenet.org] (Mpls, Minnesota) that we gave to those who couldn't afford a computer. I used to volunteer for the TCFN, doing support stuff, mostly answering voicemails. Can't remember the particular brand anymore... Some phoen company gave us oodles of 'em. :)

  • Optimized for speed? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @09:27AM (#5954451) Homepage Journal
    Ahem...

    Excuse me, but as someone who has worked on Minitel for a loooooong time, I can assure you it is not, repeat NOT "optimized for speed" in any way!

    If I remember well, most Minitel models actually have a 1200/2400 bps modem integrated. The day I bought a 14.4 Kbps modem is the day I said goodbye to Minitel for ever.

    Closed technology + high entry fee + sloooooow speed = disaster when the Internet arrived.

    • Re:Optimized for speed? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by chrysalis ( 50680 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @09:49AM (#5954665) Homepage
      Yes it was.

      To order a train ticket with a Minitel, you need 1 minute. Just because even with intentional slowdowns (bloated animations, etc), the Minitel focuses on the content. The text appears immediately. And it's very accessible. And navigation is trivial, the keyboard makes it even more easy with "access keys" (back, next, home, etc) . Hit a key, the related text immediately appears. Hit another key, the page immediately interrupts to show the new text. Very fast, very convenient.

      Nowadays, to order the same product on a web site, you need to close 25 popups, to find the small right link hidden behind a big unrelated flash animation, you need to wait, wait, and wait again until the text appears, you need to wait again between two pages because of a fullscreen ad, you need to wait once and again because there's a java applet and your JVM must load and start, you have to resize your window because you don't see the whole text, you need to reconfigure your browser because the web site doesn't allow you to resize windows and your fonts are too large, and you need to blindly trust a lot of unknown intermediate ISPs as soon as you submit unencrypted content.

      Also, the Minitel had a slow, but guaranteed bandwidth. With 1200/75, 10 people could talk in real time (what I mean by real time is that when someone hit a key, the character immediately appears on everybody's screen, a la "talk" but way more featureful) . There was no lag. Never (or it was due to the server) .

      What else ? Minitel was cool enough to read/write mails (local mails + internet mail gateways) . It was simple and easy. And FAST.

      Nowadays, to read one pertinent mail, I have to delete 50 SPAM, and sometimes I must fight with OpenOffice or HTML crap just to read plain text that I won't be able to quote in the reply. That's complicated, boring and slow.

      With Internet, I spend :

      - 50% of the time to seek information.
      - 20% of the time to make it possible to access it (install required software, upgrade it, patch it because of security flaws, configure stuff, etc) .
      - 20% of the time to close popups, restart crashed browser, submit registration forms, etc.
      - 10% to press "reload" or to try again later because the network is slow, because the server is broken, etc.

      Wow, thank you.

      I really prefered the Minitel days.
      • Excuse me? What planet are you from?

        Here is a quick (and tongue-in-cheek) answer:

        Just because even with intentional slowdowns (bloated animations, etc), the Minitel focuses on the content.

        Intentional slowdowns. Thank you for pointing that out. Since every Minitel server out there charged by the minute, it was in their interest to make you stay as long as possible. The results were horrendous. And costly.

        Hit a key, the related text immediately appears. Hit another key, the page immediately interrupts
        • Intentional slowdowns. Thank you for pointing that out. Since every Minitel server out there charged by the minute, it was in their interest to make you stay as long as possible. The results were horrendous. And costly.

          First, it was negligeable compared to what today's internet is. Next, it all depends on the services you were going to. If you were going to pr0n services, yes, there were plenty of intentional slowdowns. But there was none on RTC servers, and there was none on professionnal servers (yes
      • 20% of the time to close popups, restart crashed browser,

        Really, **really** go now, and download Mozilla. Right now. Don't delay.

  • Late to the game- (Score:3, Funny)

    by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @09:45AM (#5954626) Homepage Journal
    Can we slashdot it yet?
  • ... based on the phone system of its owner, France Telecom...

    Don't you mean Freedom Telecom?
  • Anyone else had huge phone bills due to RTEL ?

    RTEL was _the_ thing that made me love Minitel.
    And it was the headquarter of most Atari/Amiga demo crews :)

    *SAL 2

    #]#O#HMinitel rules#I#L#\

  • French high-tech is rather good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jeppe Salvesen ( 101622 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @10:20AM (#5954950)
    The French have a pretty impressive list of high-tech ventures in recent times. They have implemented chip technology in their credit cards (since the fraud was getting out of hand). They made the Concorde with the British. They created TGV - high-speed trains that compete with airline traffic on short- to mid-range flights. The Minitel is old tech now, but I bet it was an inspiration to AOL.

    Not bad for a bunch of frog-eaters ;)

  • A call to RTC users (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chrysalis ( 50680 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @10:21AM (#5954963) Homepage
    "RTC"s were free local Minitel servers made by individuals.

    Sure, there were not a lot of possible concurrent access (because phone lines were expensive for the server owner), but RTCs were really fun, especially because all people were living in the same area.

    With some previous other RTC freaks, I'm trying to make a meeting of former RTC users in Paris. If you were addicted to RTC-ONE, JEF, OXYGENE, APOGEE and other RTCs, and if you live in Paris, please drop me a little mail at rtc@pureftpd.org . It would be really kewl to meet each other to remember the good'ol time :)

    -ChrYsaLiS.

  • When I was 14/15 years old... meaning 16 years ago, I use to use our minitel at home like crazy.

    I was members of different groups, add my Amstrad, and then Amiga, was hacking on Minitel for some fun. It wasn't actually _that_ secure.

    We discovered some flaws and I was using the minitel to communicate 'secretly' with other people of my group, having also mail functionnality, we were to leave ourself mails to retrieve at some other time, actually it was very similar to IRC to talk, that was so cool, be able

  • MiniTel was *way* ahead of time... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @10:32AM (#5955054)
    MiniTel was standard in France when a few non-french were still fiddling about with the C64 and 4 Mailboxes across the atlantic. Shure that HW was rugged and not very flexible and that modem was superslow, but it was a standard.
    And its acceptance was much broader than that of the Inet today. *Everybody* would use it. For chatting, billing (payment via phonebill) and offline communication via bb and the like. The boxes were small compared to todays PCs and everyone with more than 2 braincells and a little bit of common sense could operate them instantly. There were public MiniTel booths everywhere and even pubs, clubs and restaurants would have one or two. Remember, this came something like 15 years before there where Internet Cafe's.
    In terms of "being online" France really was ten years ahead of time. At least.
    • Yes, and there already were plenty of Wikis (usually by hitting CORRECTION on a message) and Blogs (through private forums, "affiches" and responders).

      Of course, instant messaging was already there (*TEL).

      Oh and anyone could also create special effects using escape codes (# and $) and share them in real time. Maybe the internet world will discover this in 5 years, and this will be a revolution.

  • 20 years old, never once in the black (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @11:23AM (#5955516) Homepage
    At least as of 5 years ago, FT had lost money on Minitel for each and every year that it was operational. Some content providers were making a profit (the porn providers, if other /. comments are to be trusted) but FT required life support from the government from day one.
    Happy birthday and all, but how do you say "pork-barrell politics" in french?

    --
  • I wish someone could build a similar network in the US. An 8 or 16 bit machine powered by a GUI like Contiki [slashdot.org] or OpenGEM [shaneland.co.uk]

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