[HN Gopher] Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the We...
___________________________________________________________________
Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 167 points
Date : 2022-01-13 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| jackofalltrades wrote:
| this episode of command line heroes talks about the minitel
| (https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-7/world)
|
| Season 7 of the podcast is all about the first times of the web.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2017)!
|
| Bunch of discussion a year or so ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24439744
| louissan wrote:
| I remember being nearly murdered by my parents after they
| received the phone bill via the (physical, paper-based in those
| days :-) ) mail. The minitel promptly was locked out of reach of
| the family's children ....
|
| still, good days. They even had games!
|
| 36.15 ...
| jpoesen wrote:
| A little too much of 3615 ZAZA perhaps?
| louissan wrote:
| hah I wish I could have. But... in hindsight ... no.
|
| Teenage wet fantasies and all that :-)
| thamer wrote:
| For context for "36.15": you would access Minitel services by
| typing a numeric code followed by a short textual name, the
| most common code being 3615.
|
| Advertisements for Minitel services would say something like
| "Dial 3615 HOTSTUFF to meet a passionate lover". A _lot_ of
| these services were adult chat, games, or extremely low-res
| porn, and it was easy to rack up a massive phone bill by
| connecting to them (you 'd have to remember to disconnect,
| too!). Another very common use cases was phone book lookups.
|
| Think of it as a physical terminal for a ncurses-style terminal
| app using a remote client, with the display updating line by
| line with a scanning cursor as you received data. There's an
| example of what that looked like in this short documentary
| about Minitel:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlUmxUB9RhI&t=500s - every
| single page loaded line by line that way.
| maxired wrote:
| I remember ads in Video Game magazine claiming you could get free
| video games. You would actually pay by dialing 1 Hour or so on a
| very expensive service.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If anything it was so far ahead of the early web that it hindered
| adoption of the WWW in France. It was incredibly good and rich,
| many services that could be used by non-technical people and had
| a built in monetization system for information providers. It took
| at least until 1996 before the web could compete and by that time
| France reluctantly started to let go of their beloved tiny
| terminals. It took until 2012 (!!) before it was finally
| decommissioned, but by then there really wasn't much left of it
| to be turned off.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I still think it's better for the average people. It's also
| frugal oriented. You won't have youtube or google maps but for
| simple searches or orders I think it was peak. Just give it a
| speed bump and you're good.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Zero eye candy, and 1KB pages. Imagine how fast those would
| load on today's hardware.
| agumonkey wrote:
| all solar powered on an esp32 thingie
| champtar wrote:
| 8 colors is plenty eye candy :)
| fmajid wrote:
| Not really. I worked for France Telecom's Wanadoo ISP division
| and the Minitel guys tried to sabotage us at every opportunity,
| including getting the head of our first division CEO Roger
| Courtois, but they did not manage to slow the progress, even
| though at the time they had $1B/year in revenues. The bigger
| hindrance was relatively low PC penetration compared to the UK,
| Netherlands or Germany.
|
| Fun story: at the time TCP/IP did not ship standard with
| Windows, so we had to ship CD-ROMs with installers for WinSock,
| along with a browser (initially Netscape, then IE because it
| had much better provisioning tools, not because of Microsoft's
| dirty tricks though they certainly tried). My colleague who was
| responsible for this was clearly so traumatized he shortly
| later left the company and joined the Catholic priesthood...
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > The bigger hindrance was relatively low PC penetration
| compared to the UK, Netherlands or Germany.
|
| Wasn't that, in part, due to the fact that many people in
| France already had a Minitel at home?
| trasz wrote:
| In pre-internet times the purpose of a PC was quite
| different from electronic communication, so I'd guess
| people ought to have them anyway... It's a good question,
| though, why was that.
| miniwark wrote:
| It's only partly true, many people indeed have a Minitel at
| home, because it was free to have one (like it was free to
| have a landline phone). You only had to pay for the usage.
| And there was great services not yet available on WWW :
| find the train timetable, find the phone number of someone,
| chat with a (fake) sexy girl...
|
| As for the PC penetration, there was many, but most of them
| where not ready for network usage : Commodore, Amstrad,
| Amiga, Thomson and first generation IBM-PC with MS-DOS.
| Only the last Amiga, Macintosh and IBM compatibles had the
| software to use a modem (Thomson had included a Minitel as
| dual bot in some of their computer instead).
|
| There was no need for internet or to change the computer
| when WordPerfect, Multiplan and games still work perfectly.
| At the time, the pricey computer than you bought in the
| 80's was still good enough in the 90's...
|
| I think than what had incite people to get a computer with
| modem is not WWW but email (with was not a Minitel
| feature). The real thing than Minitel hindred in France are
| Bulletin Board Systems. They where never really a thing in
| France.
|
| For the curious, there are still a few unofficial Minitel
| services available : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-
| serveur_Minitel All you need is a Raspberry Pi and a
| modified Minitel...
| 123pie123 wrote:
| MS Windows 3.11 came with TCP/IP winsocks, MS Windows 3.1
| didn't
|
| but that was the same for all countries
|
| I had the painful job of getting Windows running with netware
| ie IPX also with TCP/IP
| karmakaze wrote:
| I remember those days, travelling with a Win 3.1 laptop and
| a PPP stack with Winsock.dll to use dial-up in various
| countries. And 1-1 direct text chat apps.
| cm2187 wrote:
| And it solved a problem I'd argue the internet hasn't solved
| yet: how to charge users securely, easily and for small
| amounts. The way it did that is through your phone bill, since
| the minitel was using your phone line. No credit card number to
| enter (and be hacked), no credentials to enter. Of course it
| also meant kids had access to it...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > many services that could be used by non-technical people and
| had a built in monetization system for information providers
|
| There's still a Minitel today: it's the Apple ecosystem.
|
| Minitel demonstrated regular people were willing to buy
| services on a machine (phone, phone-like terminal, computer)
| and use it as part of their normal lives.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Why singleout apple, when our lives are surrounded by digital
| subscriptions from a lot of other companies too? Office,
| Netflix, Youtube Premium, Spotify, Blackblaze etc, etc...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Because the Minitel was completely vertivally integrated.
|
| The terminals, software it ran (as the "OS"), Network and
| billing were all handled by one entity. And only this
| entity could approve software for distribution. It was a
| completely centralized walled garden.
|
| Office, Netflix, Youtube Premium, Spotify, Blackblaze can
| all run anywhere, and on platforms such as Windows are free
| to do their own distribution.
| trasz wrote:
| Because Apple has an ecosystem, whereas the others you
| mentioned live within someone else's ecosystems.
| jbkiv wrote:
| I was inspired by the Minitel to start Esurance in 1997. The
| Minitel of course had porn (more Craigslist type "offerings"
| from real people) but also reservations, travel,
| and...INSURANCE! You are totally correct, it was so efficient
| that it delayed the adoption of the worldwide web. Of course
| France wanted something in FRENCH (!). As I was raising money
| in Europe for Esurance, the French executives would look down
| on me and say "we have the Minitel, we want nothing to do with
| your Internet" :-)
| elvis70 wrote:
| In the 1989 song Goodbye Marylou, Michel Polnareff evokes
| sentimental relationships via Minitel.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxGLcJgpcEg
| josefrichter wrote:
| Is there a place in France, probably a technical museum, where
| one can still try functional Minitel terminal? Or maybe an online
| "demo"?
| vmception wrote:
| Protip: this is where we are at with Web3 right now.
|
| People are excited because they can build, any state you see is
| not the end all be all, and can be changed... by you! It's also
| very lucrative, more than FAANG while using a simpler stack to
| deploy a product, so that will keep attracting builders and their
| networks.
| FiddlerClamp wrote:
| Traveling through Paris in 1989 I met a guy who had a terminal at
| his place, and explained to me what a boon it was for gay guys to
| meet up with each other, socialize, and make friends. I have no
| doubt that gay men partly drove Minitel adoption (along with
| other technologies like group phone chat lines, dating apps, and
| so on).
| bernardlunn wrote:
| And in UK we had Prestel, also ahead of its time but run by a
| telco and disrupted by the PC. I woz there, said the old Geezer
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I have fond memories of Minitel. I remember chatting with other
| kids on forums when I was about 10 years old. It was really the
| web before the web. The only issue was that it was incredibly
| expensive (except for a few services). But it was revolutionary
| in the sense that within a couple of years, almost every family
| had one and became connected.
|
| Overall, it was a much faster adoption than internet: it wasn't
| until the smartphone that everybody was online, before that lots
| of families didn't have the mean or the skills to operate a
| computer. Not mentioning that Windows was such a mess. My father
| bought a PC which became so slow that he couldn't even use it
| anymore.
| smm11 wrote:
| Another one of these things that could have steered us all a
| different way, if only.
| markharper wrote:
| Notably a core plot device in the French Home Alone style film
| Deadly Games (aka Dial Code Santa).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_Games_(film)
| dmix wrote:
| The trailer is like a Bizarro world Home Alone
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096741/
|
| Now I'm curious if the Home Alone screenwriter watched it.
| elvis70 wrote:
| John Hughes watched it at the festival of Cannes in 1989,
| after this article (in French):
| https://www.bfmtv.com/people/3615-code-pere-noel-le-film-
| fra...
| dmix wrote:
| This has always been a great business idea. Watch good
| foreign films and spin them into Americanized versions then
| pitch them to Hollywood.
|
| Also I find it amusing that Home Alone in France is titled
| "Mom, I missed the plane"
| elvis70 wrote:
| At least, Rene Manzor was eventually hired by Amblin.
| bertil wrote:
| I'm surprised how little the histories of the web include the
| contribution of the French tech sector for DSL, the technology
| that made computer networks easy to expand to every house, and
| the general idea that the Internet could be a domestic
| technology. Until the late 80s, the Internet was a military and
| gradually academic tool, but even until the mid-90s, having an
| internet connection at home was quaint outside of France where
| accessing your official records, buying certain things online was
| a convenient reality. TCP/IP and Tier 1 networks were only one
| half of the story, and the far smaller, easier half: connecting
| every country is a matter of a few big projects; connecting
| everyone is something, that to this day, many still struggle
| with.
|
| There's an occasional mention of Cepremades as an inspiration for
| the Internet Protocol, some technicality about Alohanet, but
| never a history of why that should be in everyone's living room,
| except a mysterious prescient and unhelpful AOL, their
| omnipresent CD, and nothing about the government-sponsored,
| centralised project to make cheap modulator-demodulator use long
| copper wires -- something that proved both incredibly difficult
| and relevant.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| > _I'm surprised how little the histories of the web include
| the contribution of the French tech sector for DSL_
|
| Do you mean for digital technologies or for specifically DSL?
| As I remember up to 1996 there was no commercial DSL in France,
| but there were excellent ISDN coverage (with rate up to
| 128kbits/sec with two channels). However it was quite expensive
| and when DSL was commercialized in France, it was cheaper at
| the basic rate of 512Kbits/sec. ISDN commercialization started
| around 1988 in France. In 1996 the Network part of FT started
| to think how to open the network to higher bandwidth, and it
| was not so easy because the internal backbone was built on ATM
| as it was used by Minitel users. Some years later (2002?) with
| declining Minitel revenues, FT decided to give the priority to
| DSL, with an adequate IP backbone.
|
| (Source: It's only from my memories, I was involved in Rennes'
| 1987 ISDN experiment, network organization in 96-98 and
| commercialization of ISDN and later DSL, in Brittany, from 1998
| to 2002)
| p_l wrote:
| regarding ATM and DSL - A lot of setups in Europe apparently
| used PPPoA, not PPPoE, meaning your DSL line integrated
| easily with the ATM network on the backbone from my
| understanding.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Thanks, In France it started with PPPoA, yet quickly it
| moved to PPPoE (~1999). People indeed used PCs not minitels
| to connect to the new thing of the time (Internet). At the
| time there was a need to update PCs as most individual or
| family customers had Windows 98. My experience is that it
| added instabilities to PC with Win98 where if I remember
| correctly PPPoE worked out of the box with Win2K and WinXP
| (it's was a long time ago). Anyway most home PCs of the
| time where not to able to deal with the speed of ADSL. I
| remember that the owner of a restaurant in Rennes wanted us
| to pay them a new PC!
| [deleted]
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| The Minitel was pretty nice. I saw one in 1989 on a trip to
| Paris.
|
| An important fact hinted at below is: you got the bill as part of
| your monthly phone bill.
|
| Probably the most common use, not all that interesting to us, was
| replacing 411 (remember that? I don't think that was the
| Information number in France.)
|
| Besides porn, it also had online dating.
| linschn wrote:
| The number was 12. It was discontinued in the early 2000 IIRC.
| You would call, get a human operator and could make complex
| queries like get the number of somebody you knew the sound of
| the name (but not the exact way of writing it) in a town or
| around a specific area, and the operator would help you find
| the number.
|
| Also in France, 15 is medical services, 17 is the police and 18
| are the firefighters. By calling 112 anywhere in Europe you'll
| get an English speaking operator that can dispatch any
| emergency service.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > it also had online dating.
|
| In Brazil (Sao Paulo) we had a similar, Minitel-based, system.
| No online dating, but I met my first wife in a chatroom. It
| also had banking and you could transfer money to different
| banks with it. Initially I got an MSX computer with a modem (at
| that time the telco rented out the computer instead of a
| dedicated terminal for a ridiculously low fee), which was also
| useful for connecting to local BBSs.
|
| Later on I gave the MSX back (should never have done that - it
| was an unremarkable computer, but a pretty good videogame) and
| added a V.23 modem to my Apple II+ clone. The system continued
| to evolve, started accepting 1200 and 2400 bps inbound
| connections (which made it more accessible, because V.23 modems
| were not easy to come by). Last time I used it was with Windows
| 95 and its terminal software.
|
| Legend says the system ran on Multics on a Honeywell-Bull
| mainframe, making me an actual Multics user.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| A friend showed me Minitel in 1994, and I was half-surprised,
| half-not-surprised that even on this entirely text-based system,
| there was still porn (or at least, "visual erotica"). Human
| nature, eh?
| fabrice_d wrote:
| The so-called "Minitel Rose" (all the erotica chat services)
| services were a cash cow for France Telecom, bringing in
| billions every year.
|
| Xavier Niel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Niel) started
| his empire with a sex oriented chat service.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Billions might be a little oversized.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel :
|
| In 1998, Minitel generated EUR832 million ($1,121 million)
| of revenue, of which EUR521 million was channelled by
| France Telecom to service providers.
| linschn wrote:
| It's close if you count it in francs, and include all
| services. This article [0] says that France Telecome gave
| 700 M FRF to the operators, which means that 1,050 M FRF
| were collected in 1986 alone.
|
| [0]
|
| https://www.nouvelobs.com/tech/20170804.OBS3007/l-age-d-
| or-d...
| mastazi wrote:
| In Italy, the same service was called Videotel[0] and the
| terminals were sold by the state-owned phone company, Sip. there
| was a model where the keyboard would slide out from under the CRT
| screen[1], and another model where the hinged keyboard would fold
| onto the screen (similar to a laptop keyboard)[2].
|
| I remember in my area some pubs had these, they were on the
| tables and you could use them while you were there, it was the
| first time in my life that I was chatting with someone on the
| other side of the globe. (I had tried visiting some of the
| popular BBS on my Amiga to look at cool stuff but had never
| actually exchanged messages with anyone online). It was cool
| because you could talk to perfect strangers but sometimes the
| discussion would go deep. I remember I was so excited about it
| and my friends were too. I think in the modern Internet we don't
| really have something like that.
|
| [0] (Italian Wikipedia) - https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotel
|
| [1] (picture)
| https://forum.telefonino.net/images_fotodb/pict001494862_7_1...
|
| [2] (picture)
| https://i.ebayimg.com/00/z/3UcAAOSwT5RdB2AU/$_59.JPG
| athenot wrote:
| It ran on V.23, which was 1200 bits/s down and 75 bits/s up, but
| could be reversed in case one wanted to upload / type stuff.
|
| Once modems were widespread, it was a lot better to use Minitel
| emulators on a computer, as one could record and replay sessions
| after disconnection--a key aspect since most Minitel numbers were
| billed at premium rates, to allow services to be monetized.
|
| </memories>
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Read about this in Computer networking : a top down approach,
| fascinating story.
| ulkesh wrote:
| I currently work for the person who helped start US Videotel and
| I still haven't scratched much of the surface about all of it
| with him. Everything about Minitel and US Videotel reminds me of
| what was depicted in seasons 2 and 3 of _Halt and Catch Fire_. I
| always wondered if Minitel was their inspiration for the Mutiny
| software.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I remember being shown the minitel in the early 90s, and being
| AMAZED.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I own two Minitels. I made a connector
| (https://pila.fr/wordpress/?p=361) that allows me to use one as a
| serial terminal and it works nicely with a Raspberry Pi/stty. I
| am in the process of writing my own firmware for the other one.
|
| One of my Minitels acting as a terminal over a serial cable I
| made... displaying jgc.org via Lynx: https://imgur.com/a/ecmvfMj
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Hm. Seems like just another implementation of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex to me. Which I didn't like
| that much because of the german
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext , which reminded me
| of the stuff you could get on TV, like this
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext
|
| Maybe the french stuff was more useful in practice, the german
| always seemed scammy, somehow.
| dboreham wrote:
| The key difference is that every household in France was
| provided with a Minitel terminal, on the theory that this would
| be lower cost than printing phone books. So adoption was high.
| nbuet wrote:
| Very different. It was really a query/answer based system with
| built in monetization. You want to check credit of a company,
| find someone is an obscure directory, talk with some 1996
| onlyFan chick? Minitel could do. Also, online MMORPG (check car
| crash).
| masklinn wrote:
| > Maybe the french stuff was more useful in practice
|
| It was highly pushed by the national telco. The telco lent
| terminals for free so they were easily available, and there
| were tons of useful services, especially but not only from
| national companies: starting from the 80s you had stocks,
| online shopping, travel reservations, information services,
| message boards, databases[0], games, dating sites, ...
|
| Monetisation / payment was integrated from the start, through
| the phone bill: just like premium-rate phone numbers, minitel
| had premium-rate services (both first and third party), so you
| could make money out of valuable services. It was nothing
| compared to the modern web (~25000 services and about $1bn
| revenue at its height), but for the mid-80s to mid-90s and out
| of a population of 60m it was quite massive.
|
| [0] trying to get rid of phonebooks was a big reason for
| minitel in the first place
| fmajid wrote:
| Remember, at the time the Telco was a government department
| in a country that firmly believes in industrial policy.
|
| De Gaulle had neglected the country's phone network and it
| was in a piteous state by the 1960s. A popular comedy sketch,
| "Le 22 a Asnieres" by Fernand Raynaud had the hapless
| protagonist trying to call number 22 at Asnieres and it was
| such an ordeal he only managed to get connected by a
| telephone operator in New York...
|
| During the 70s, specially under the technocratic president
| Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the French government invested
| massively to catch up and for several years the Directorate-
| General of Telecommunications was the single largest
| government department by budget. They bet massively on
| digital switching and created huge telco gear vendors in
| Alcatel. Towards the end of the 70s that massive surge of
| investment had started to dwindle and the government was
| trying to figure out what could be the next wave to foster
| the telecommunications equipment industry, and Minitel was
| the answer.
|
| It didn't export well. There was a trial in the US with US
| West, but it didn't pan out. My former boss Jean Lebrun was
| one of the key people on the electronic phone directory
| project, and at the time it was the largest real-time
| database in the world. It was essentially a distributed in-
| memory database build on 1980s computer technology, and as
| you can imagine very expensive. Fun story: Oracle tried to
| get them to evaluate their RDBMS for the project, and even
| gave them access to the source code, but it was found to be
| inadequate.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Let's not forget that Minitel couldn't be as great as it was if
| not for its complete and utter centralization.
|
| Sometimes having twenty slightly different services that are
| blocked from interoperating for the sake of some abstract notion
| of privacy isn't that great after all.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Minitel was probably subject to substantial government
| regulation, unlike the "tech" companies that dominate the web
| and overinfluence the internet. Minitel was probably funded at
| least in part through taxation.
|
| Certainly, Minitel was not a secretive Silicon Valley-styled
| company with dual class shares or other entrenching governance
| structures, that allow for concentration of voting power in the
| hands of company insiders, through disproportionate allocation
| of voting rights among shareholders.
|
| It seems the French do not have the same hatred of telecom that
| Amercians do.
|
| Regardless of the public opinion toward telecom, it has
| historically been subject to far more regulation than so-called
| "tech" companies operating websites. Sadly, some of today's
| telecom companies try to emulate or piggyback on the privacy
| violating behaviour of "Big Tech".
|
| Centralisation/decentralisation is an interesting debate, but
| if the issue is privacy then, IMO, one also needs to consider
| the question of regulation/deregulation.
|
| Perhaps Minitel was an example of a regulated, government-
| supported public computer networking service that worked very
| well.
|
| Silicon Valley and its charlatan ideology is a privacy
| disaster. It is probably a threat to the survival of democratic
| societies as we know them.
| LeanderK wrote:
| > for the sake of some abstract notion of privacy isn't that
| great after all.
|
| For some this is not some abstract notion but a real worry. I
| am glad the internet started decentralised.
| pkaye wrote:
| I remember back in the late 80s the SF BART stations used to have
| terminals for something similar to Minitel. It had crude color
| vector graphics and a menu based system. A little sluggish to
| since it was probably using modems. Mainly just BART and local
| information. I used to play with them while waiting for trains
| with my family.
| EGreg wrote:
| To me, the Web and VOIP are two great examples of open,
| permissionless, decentralized plaforms totally disrupting
| centralized services of the day, and hugely boosting the cost and
| effectiveness of publishing and telecommunications.
|
| And why I believe Web2 should have something like Wordpress to
| take on Big Tech.
|
| And why I think Web3 should move past grift and peer to peer
| protocols, and to applications to holistivally serve entire
| communities. (https://intercoin.org/proposal.pdf)
|
| PS: I have put my money where my mouth is and built exactly this,
| over 10 years with no VC funding, and it's profitable. Qbix for
| Web2 and Intercoin for Web3 https://intercoin.org/overview.pdf
| legulere wrote:
| In Germany we had something similar called BTX that included
| online banking in 1981:
| https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/28/business/high-technology-...
| doe88 wrote:
| At this point, Minitel has become kind of _Rorschachtest_ for
| france, some see forward engineering, some see decline, some
| bureaucracy... What 's great, is one can project almost anything
| on it.
|
| _(disclosure, i 'm french)_
| dang wrote:
| Some past related threads (if anyone's curious):
|
| _Minitel_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29004616 - Oct
| 2021 (2 comments)
|
| _Old School Minitel Laptop: 7 Steps (With Pictures) -
| Instructables_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28861842 -
| Oct 2021 (1 comment)
|
| _Minitel, the Open Network Before the Internet_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28794257 - Oct 2021 (3
| comments)
|
| _The Rise and Fall of Minitel_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25507260 - Dec 2020 (23
| comments)
|
| _Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web (2017)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24439744 - Sept 2020 (196
| comments)
|
| _Log on Like It's 1985: A Fragment of Minitel Returns_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18781820 - Dec 2018 (9
| comments)
|
| _Minitel - The Rise and Fall of a National Tech Treasure
| [video]_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16263093 - Jan
| 2018 (67 comments)
|
| _Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15401405 - Oct 2017 (15
| comments)
|
| _Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681561 - July 2017 (107
| comments)
|
| _Minitel, the Open Network Before the Internet_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14577881 - June 2017 (53
| comments)
|
| _Minitel, France 's precursor to the Web, to go dark 30/6/12_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4175141 - June 2012 (32
| comments)
|
| _Minitel: The rise and fall of the France-wide web_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4170531 - June 2012 (21
| comments)
|
| _How France fell out of love with Minitel_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4088360 - June 2012 (1
| comment)
|
| _France 's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping,
| and B2B_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2733106 - July
| 2011 (46 comments)
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