Minitel: France’s Alternate Internet That Survived Until 2012
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2022
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Video written by Adam Chase
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This definitely exceeds the half is interesting threshold
You don't see it represented in media much, but France in the 1980s had this quite futuristic vibe. Minitel, TGVs, Smart Cards while the rest of the world was using mag stripes, with a backdrop of shiny modern buildings like La Défense, and the Pompidou centre, all powered by France's massive commitment to nuclear power.
To this day French people who've been talking about themselves will still end with a depreacting "3615 My Life", the French 80s equivalent of "thanks for coming to my TED talk" 😂
Being French, I remember very well my 70 yo grandmother ordering stuff and booking train tickets in the 1980's all by herself! And when the Internet and WWW came in the mid 1990's, France was the last developped country to be Online : the adds were like "with the Internet, you'll soon be able to book tickets from your home or send messages, etc." and most French people would think "It has been 15 years I can do this with the Minitel without having to buy an expensive computer I'll never use anyway".
Today's fact: Both Nicholas Cage and Michael Jackson shared the same wife, Elvis Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.
I am french and I actually STILL have a Minitel on my shelf! I remember the times using it… Ah the good ol' days, snif…
This was just interesting, not half as such
Could you please make a video on the story of Vulcan, West Virginia and how in the 70s the Soviet Union and East Germany nearly built a bridge there? It started off as the small village wanted a bridge that crossed the Tug Fork river, since they used to have a foot bridge that collapsed, and when both West Virginia, Kentucky and the federal government ignored them, the local mayor asked the Soviet embassy and East German officials to help build a bridge: the Soviets even sent a journalist there, and West Virginia immediatly promised and built a bridge so that the Soviets won't build one. It's a pretty intersting story, and it was major news at the time.
There were networks like this around the world back then, but only in France did it get really popular.
I will forever be indebted to you 😇 you’ve changed my whole life I’ll continue to preach about your name for the world to hear you’ve saved me from a huge financial debt with just little investment thanks so much Mrs Lisa Erik,
I used Minitel back in the day on trips to France. It was genuinely handy.
The day before Minitel definitely stopped working, my dad unearthed our old terminal from the basement and plugged it in. It still worked like a charm ! A lot of services weren't available anymore, but we could still consult the phonebook and the weather, for exemple. It was a really fun evening, full of nostalgia for my parents and those of us children old enough to remember them using it, and full of discovery for my youngest siblings.
That was actually quite innovative, and the concept hasnt died out at all. You still can call a number with a phone, to get it connected, and as well, the payment goes over your Phone Bill. Theoretically, it should be possible to buy a train ticket when a company would offer it. Just not via a computer with a keyboard and a program, but with a phone via a call or a SMS.
As an Australian, I'm experiencing a crushing sense of irony after watching this video. The French government anticipated the social and economic value of the internet
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In the UK, there was Prestel which was a similar service, run by British Telecom, employing teletext style text / graphics and dialing up to a centralised Prestel server. Elsewhere there were vatious private Bulletin Board Systems you could dial into around the world. Nothing quite as expansive, popular and long lasting as Minitel of course.
A few things from an insider. ( I've been working in Telecoms for 20+ years now )
My parents still call internet the minitel lol
I'm French, and it was pretty interesting as a kid reading my uncles' old teen magazines and seeing a bunch of ads for 3615 video games and such. Also my grandfather, a former librarian, kept using his terminal all the way to the end to access public library catalogues; the switch to using the Internet was pretty rough for him.
I think Minitel worked becuase it was mostly a text-based system, which has a relatively low overhead for data transfers. Minitel was finally rendered obsolete (in my opinion) when surfing on the Internet became reasonably fast by 2011, even before 4G LTE became widely available.