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Minitel: French Internet Cousin

More than 40 years ago, Minitel terminals appeared in France, and with them many of the benefits that we are used to using inside the modern Internet. It is difficult to imagine that in the 80s a simple housewife could book theater tickets, order food delivery, and, in the meantime, adjust the thermostat in the next room, sitting at the keyboard. In fact, this is only a small part of what the Minitel terminals were able to do. And all this worked on the basis of the French telephone network and only domestically.

Government support for Minitel officially ended in 2012. But retro lovers and Minitel fans around the world still launch their own small servers, and terminals for access to them can be purchased on eBay for reasonably reasonable money.
The phenomenon and history of Minitel is practically unknown to the general user in Russia and the CIS. This is understandable: in those years we had ZX Spectrum, BBS and other attributes of “our atmosphere”. But in the homeland, the word "Minitel" almost became a household word for the familiar world wide web. If it were not for the hype around the closure of the French network in 2012, many of us might not have known about it.

In today's article we will talk about Minitel: we will learn how the terminals appeared, how they looked and what they knew how to do. And for maximum objectivity, ask our friends from France about Minitel.



A Brief History of Minitel



Presentation video Minitel, 1978

In 1978, the French Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (formerly PPT, Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones) began developing a promising new system for interactive information exchange between telephone company subscribers. It was planned that by distributing special terminals that could connect to the network, it would be possible to significantly increase the utilization of 23 million telephone lines across the country, as well as reduce the cost of printing paper telephone directories and the content of reference services. According to official statistics, in the first 8 years of its existence, Minitel managed to achieve savings of 500 million francs only by reducing the circulation of phone books.
At the heart of Minitel designed to be used a few years earlier in the UK technology "Videotex" .

The official presentation of Minitel took place on July 13, 1980. Two days later, the citizens of Saint-Malo were given a “trial” batch of 55 terminals. By the fall, the total number of users reached 2500. In 1981, another 4000 experimental terminals with a new design were distributed in the department of Ile and Vilen (Brittany). The commercialization of Minitel began in 1982.

By the beginning of 1986, there were up to 1.4 million active Minitel terminals throughout the country. Their popularity was also due to the fact that anyone could get the terminal for an unlimited period right at the post office or at the office of the telephone company, although de jure, the terminals remained the property of PPT.

Many eyewitnesses wrote that learning to use Minitel was no more difficult than toasting bread in a toaster or lighting a stove. Ease of use coupled with affordability made Minitel a truly massive technology.

The success of Minitel caused considerable concern among the print media: there were fears that the terminals might push the traditional press out of the market. Thus, a new service appeared in Minitel: the round-the-clock newspaper Libération. Among other things, she covered the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and was very popular among terminal owners. It got to the point that Minitel also had its own, exclusive media outlets that had no print counterparts.

The bar of 3 million terminals was taken by 1988. And their number every month increased by ~ 100 thousand. Up to 23 million calls to the telephone directory occurred daily. The total number of services available in Minitel reached 6000 (~ 250 new ones were added monthly). Here is just a general list of services that could be used through Minitel terminals:

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At the beginning and mid-nineties, the peak of popularity of Minitel fell: according to some reports, 25 million people across the country were active users of the system.
The further fate of Minitel is quite predictable: the world Internet has supplanted archaic and primitive terminals. As we wrote at the beginning of the article, by 2012 there were about 670 thousand active users in France, and on July 1, Minitel was officially disconnected. True, the terminal owners still have the opportunity to communicate with each other, which is what retro lovers use.

Life with Minitel


Lineup of terminals


The very first terminals, Minitel 1, were monochrome and displayed up to 8 shades of gray.


Minitel 1, source: ordi-spare.com

Later models, the Minitel 1 Couleur, already had a color display and a comparable color picker to the ZX Spectrum.


Minitel 1 Couleur Radiotechnique, source: sites.google.com/site/collectionminitel

Later on, “flat” terminals with a display at the top and buttons below appeared on the market, anti-vandal terminals for public places, terminals with a sliding keyboard and other interesting models. For more than 30 years of the official history of Minitel, many design trends have changed, and many of them are reflected in the lineup.


Several Minitel terminal models, source: taringa.net


The relatively modern Minitel terminal, source: makeuseof.com

In addition, there were portable models:


Minitel 5 Matra, source: sites.google.com/site/collectionminitel

All terminal models, regardless of the year of manufacture, worked on the V.23 standard. The download speed was 1200 bps, the download speed was 75 bps.

It would seem, what could be the state benefit from the free distribution of these elephant terminals? Was one saving on telephone directories enough?

The fact is that every minute of access to most network resources cost money.
The user was given a choice of two payment models: hourly and per minute. At the end of the month, the user received a telephone bill in which Minitel minutes were added to the main amount. It should be noted that access to the network was by no means small and far from every Frenchman could afford to “hang up” online for a long time.

Minitel through the eyes of the French


To build the most objective picture, we asked our friends from France to share their memories of Minitel. It turned out even a little more interesting than we planned.

Franck savigny
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Rodrigue Blattes

Yes, Minitel was in those houses in those years. The terminals helped people search for phone numbers and some information. Some of the services were free. Some were worth the money. For example, I remember that Minitel allowed me to find out the results of exams for admission to higher education. It was like magic: using a telephone line (but not on the phone, this is important!) We could communicate with other people and learn something new. By the way, the current president of the telephone operator FREE Xavier Niel once offered the services of a minceler.

As you can see, different people had different attitudes towards Minitel. Someone actively used the terminals, someone preferred to wait a bit and get a real computer with all its advantages. If any of you lived or lives in France, we will be glad to hear your stories about Minitel.

Service Monetization


In the 90s, the so-called Télécarte, an analogue of the well-known Internet cards with minutes, was produced. This made it possible to better control their communication costs.


Télécarte, source: text-mode.org

Minitel pages brought their creators a guaranteed income. Connecting to each of them cost the subscriber a certain amount. A third of the company's income was given to the government, everything else (minus overhead costs) could be recorded in income. The modern Internet in this regard is more user-friendly: the business still has to try before it gets at least some profit from the visitor of its page.

To contact one or another Minitel service, the user simply had to dial his number using a terminal or a regular telephone connected to the same line. Together with the terminal, special brochures were issued, “yellow pages”, on which the numbers of some state and business services were indicated.

This brings us to another funny moment. To get to the site on the Internet, you first need to find out its address or go to a direct link. Before the advent of search engines, this process was very nontrivial. I had to leaf through paper advertising brochures, question friends or spend precious minutes of Internet access to browse the lists of sites on resources you already knew.

In Minitel, meanwhile, every new service instantly fell into a common database, the same telephone directory, access to which was provided free of charge.
It is hard to believe that such a simple and primitive technology lasted in the modern world, already captured by the Internet, for so long. Starting in 2006, Orange (formerly France Telecom) has repeatedly stated that it’s time to close Minitel, as it impedes the full integration of France into the global Internet community. But the conservatism of the French and national pride in their own unique network did not allow this to be done until 2012.

Minitel Services


Unfortunately, there are not enough high-quality photos of the Minitel screen. We’ll give a few pictures and attach a couple of interesting links that will help you immerse yourself in the history of Minitel and make your own opinion about working inside this network.


Advertising of the first personnel bureau in Minitel


Registration page of the service for “free dating”


As you can see from the screen above, the French did not give up the Internet until the last.


One of the sunset technology services: Softonic catalog

A sufficiently long presentation video:


Minitel review (in English) and a demonstration of a real connection to the Minitel service:


Repeated attempts were made to build on the basis of the Minitel terminal something more “smart” and similar to a computer, but most of these experiments failed for one reason or another. Terminals are forever terminals.


A prototype terminal with a better screen, which never saw the light, source: itc.ua

Finally, we will give some interesting links to resources related to Minitel in one way or another.


But on Arduino, things did not end there. Enthusiasts use Minitel terminals to interact with Android , again Android , Raspberry Pi and other, most often gaming devices .

From the video of Dmitry Bachilo (who needs no introduction), you can get enough theoretical information about Minitel. We deliberately did not go too deep into the device of the Minitel network and the technology underlying it, since there is already plenty of such information on the Internet.

That was the story of Minitel. Of course, it’s difficult for us to feel sorry for the disconnection of this network. Everything happens in due time - and the era of French terminals has vanished into the past. However, this does not detract from their attractiveness. Agree, it would be nice to once touch the warm case of the pot-bellied terminal. Dial the phone number starting at 3615 and find out what the weather was like in the suburbs of Marseille 32 years ago, on May 27, 1988.

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