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Minitel Hits Twenty

Posted by michael on 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."

3 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Darpanet? by joestar · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  2. la french touch by legrandgramgroum · · Score: 3, Informative

    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... :)

  3. No, the real profit center is porn by Rikardon · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.