Minitel - The Rise & Fall of a National Tech Treasure
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- ● Support RMC on Patreon: / rmcretro
● Treat me to a Coffee with Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/rmcr...
● MonsterJoysticks: monsterjoystic...
● 1ClickPrint: www.1clickprin...#RMC
● Patreon: / rmcretro
● Description
A decade before the world was getting to grips with the world wide web France was leading the way in connectivity. Pulling its ageing telephone network up from being the laughing stock of the industrialised world to the forerunner of online digital services. This is the story of the Minitel.
● Links
Jelora Minitel Server: www.jelora.fr/...
● Music
Our French Cafe - Jimmy Fontanez/Media Right Productions
By the Pool - Jingle Punks
Stale Mate - Jingle Punks
Space Chatter 1:52 Doug Maxwell/Media Right Production
Militaire Electronic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommon...)
Source: incompetech.com...
Artist: incompetech.com/
Impact Prelude by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommon...)
Source: incompetech.com...
Artist: incompetech.com/
V for Victory by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommon...)
Artist: audionautix.com/
Dance, Don't Delay by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommon...)
Source: www.twinmusicom...
Artist: www.twinmusicom...
If you ever decide to get a UK server set up, I’ll dial into it with my UK spec Minitel - Alcatel Terminal 257.
I think I may just need to do that for a follow up episode, I'll let you know if I get one up and running for you to test. Great to see you here!
I have one of those Alcatel 257 terminals too, there seem to be a lot of them around new in box! A dial in Prestel service would be fun..
I don't know if it will work. The Minitel network and the Prestel network share the same norm (Vidéotex), but not the same option of that norm. In France we have used "option 2", UK use "option 1". As long a know, its 2 options is differentiated by the encoding of the data and by the charset used. I don't know if an UK terminal was able to understand a Minitel server because of that.
The Alcatel Terminatel 256 terminal supports Prestel, Teletel (standard and mixed modes) and Teleprocessing standard.
Let the puppets do it.
Minitel was great... I used it till 1993/1994 before switching to the Internet.
One advantage of the Minitel over the Internet was paradoxically that it was far more limited.
Thus, the designers of the services had to go straight to the point. Services usually fitted on one unique page. You never had to fill absurdly long forms with unecessary fields, no pop-ups, no banners, etc...
I think that most webdesigners should first try to create their websites as if they would be used through the Minitel. It would force them to think what is essential and drop the rest.
That wouldn't play nice with multiple language versions of a site, or sites that actually need media. I think the better target would be reader mode on non-Chrome (literally every other browser of note but Google Chrome has it iirc).
Never heard of this system before. And I must say, just WOW. Never imagined that France had a little Internet of it's own way before the Web as we know it today emerged.
Quite a technological achievement for the time.
Indeed, the Minitel was absolutely ubiquitous at the time. I kept using it for train tickets and school exams results til the very end, it was just natural for everybody. The reason why I was most excited by the Internet was because it broke frontiers, as the Minitel was confined to our country. It didn't feel particularly new, but it felt free and endless in comparison.
You typed chat and I was expecting a picture of a cat to appear.
this is much like the very beginning of the internet was exactly like that on the US Robotics 56k modem
Wonderful video. There isn't many systems i'd never heard about but this is one of them. 10/10 would watch over and over again.
Haha it was very popular with us in France, everybody had one back then!
Yes! probably even had a couple! They were widely available, I think they were even free (or you could get one for very cheap)
I had seen it once, but didn't know what it was. Very interesting!
Yep, the French are known for their uniqueness, and it's just amazing how this antiquated service has actually hung around till 2012.. wow. And as an interesting sidenote, the Minitel innovation has actually slowed down the adoption of the modern internet in French... who would have thought?! hmmm
This is so typically French as the SECAM TV standard :p. But the Minitel was really great, a sort of pre-taste of what the Internet would bring. The only caveat? The phone bill. Oh boy, 3615 (I think the comm fees were about 1-2FF/min) services were kind of pricy, but the 3617 services (including the "adult" services) were price gouging (5FF/min was the highest as I remember, gonna check that values). I got several times in trouble with my parents because I connected to some games sites on the 3615 and ended up with salty phone bills (if you consider the average wage back then about 5000FF/month, you can understand :p).
shit, I had no clue france was so far ahead of the pack, the device itself is a beauty too
Thanks to socialism and government planned economy ;)
@@amax6340 Yeah, France is known for dirigisme, a balance between the free-market capitalism of the U.S, and the controlled economy of the Soviet Union, which actually lead to France enjoying a 30 year period of economic growth called the Trente Glorieuses (the Glorious Thirty), following the end of WW2.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirigisme#In_France
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses
I moved to France in the late 90s, by then it was 1/4 of the size they are showing.
MERCI !!
very good video about our Minitel.
I still use one connected to an Arduino, showing only 2 static pictures. I use it on expositions about 80's
not everybody had one back then, and showing people one running is awful, they really like it
can only give one thumb up but would give thousands if possible
thx again !!!
also, the Minitel was built like a a tank! more solid than a Nokia :) It was designed to be used for decades.
Born for last !
In the late 80's. my parents dragged me each year to France for our annual vacation. Minitels were everywhere, but I was annoyed that the only free service were directory enquiries. Adverts and newspapers listed Minitel numbers, but they were always charged. No fun for your average visiting English teen. I must admit that at the time, I did not understand the future concept of the internet, but I was amazed that everyone had these terminals which could access on-line services...
But, you had to pay when you connected !
I always think that the reason the WWW exists, is because it is free. If telecom companies such as BT had invented the internet, we would still be charged per-click. The awfully high costs associated with Prestel stopped the Minitel model being replictaed in the UK.... Which is a shame.... But ironically there is a part of me that is happy that the Minitel/Prestel business model failed.
+Clive Shaw I agree and couldn't help but think about net neutrality while researching this and the impact metred services or premium services at the isp level on the internet. It would be a terrible thing today, but if it was the norm from day one the web now would be very different or something else would have risen up with neutral values.
If you’re interested in that subject, look for articles about the “Minitelisation” of the Internet. Silos replacing the open web. The only reason most of it is free is because we’re the product (current website included).
"I always think that the reason the WWW exists, is because it is free"
Not in the U.S. You pay one (of the TWO companies, if you're lucky) in your area to get access.
It's not free. You pay monthly now
The Minitel was free, if you wanted one you just had to go to the nearest post office and the would give you one freely, but you had to pay your connections per minute . Minitel number were taxed if you called the 3615 you had to pay more than a 3614 services
Always a nice to hear some French in a youtube video when you're a french-speaker (Québec). Nice intro
We had the Minitel in Italy as well. It was called Videotel. Aside the all-in-one system. we had a version that came in the shape of a Commodore 64 cartridge that was basically a modem meant to connect to the Italian version of the service (the so-called "Adattatore Telematico"). Also, I think there was a screenless terminal based on the MSX technology. It was a pricey service and I never used it. There is very little left of it, but I think some user saved a few screenshots on disk and made a .d64.
Amerigo Costa Interessante. Essendo nato nel 92, il massimo che ricordo di questi vecchi servizi sono le BBS, è sempre bello poter espandere le proprie conoscenze tecnologiche
Beh la storia italiana delle BBS è certamente interessante. Vedi il famigerato Italian Crackdown.
Merci beaucoup monsieur RetroManCave pour cette retrospective bien renseignée ! :)
I have memories of going on the minitel with friends, checking the "pink sites" like "36 15 ULLA"...and the parents of my friends have memories of the telecom bill that came along I guess...
The video of them being destroyed was hard to watch :-(
I agree, it feels like a small part of myself is being destroyed :(
It's hard to watch but understandable, unlike old computers which still have software, these were really just made for Minitel stuff, and couldn't launch third party software, so in the end there was no other real use for these
I know, crime against technology
I think there is still one hiding in my parents basement. Hopefully nobody of my siblings decided to send it to the "dechetterie". If it is still there and nobody wants it, I would be glad to give it a maiden voyage with me in the US.
The man ripping those caps off reminded me of the dentist
Thank you for watching. A special thanks to Bastien for his research and translation assistance and Nico for sharing his memories of the Minitel. This won't be the last you see of our French terminal in the cave. Please take a moment to subscribe to the channel to enjoy future content and conversation on all things old and techy, and if you wish to support content then pop on over to www.patreon.com/RetroManCave - Neil - RMC
RetroManCave Bureaucracy, frenchness and... sex. As always in France.
I can't wait to see you using that good old Minitel as a linux terminal I guess.
For the viewers that are interested, you need one that has the "prise péri-informatique" (serial printer connector) in the back.
Then you have to make an quite simple adaptator in order to make it level compatible with a raspberry pi gpio 3V Rx tx ports.
You can find minitels for 5€ on leboncoin.fr or ebay.fr even the (rare) color tube ones. Be sure you choose a bistandard model (the ones with a B after the model number)
My brother also user an old minitel as an input/output device for arduino projects. It provided not only the keyboard and the screen but also the case, all for free (here in France everyone has one in the attic. Just ask around you and you can get 4/5 units for nothing.)
One use was to display a music playlists and choose the record to play on your media server.
The keyboard is very clicky though, and it's not what you want in a lounge. But it's so frenchy vintage!
By the way, the terminal in Windows is capable of emulating the Minitel as well.
What an amazing bit of history. I had never heard of such a system dating from so far back.
Thanks for this. I always wanted to know what one of these looked like. I used to listen to France Inter on Long Wave (the transmitter is now defunct, turned off last year, sadly, I think) in an attempt to improve my understanding of spoken French. I got used to the phrase "oui ou non, sur votre Minitel," whenever they wanted to conduct some kind of poll among their listeners. I thought at the time that the French were very much ahead of us in the public adoption of networked IT.
I remember a service called 1-2-3 in the UK, early to mid 1990's which used terminals that looked exactly like minitel ones. You could access business directories, phone book, yellow pages and even buy credit reports from it.
Fresh out of University in the mid 80's I did a few business trips to France. My company made protocol converters that allowed cheap terminals (and also the Vt100 emulation on Minitels) to communicate with IBM and Sperry mainframes.
The French workers I came across were always using Mintels to book ski vacations. Minitel sites would come up with clever block animations of skiers going down slopes, and then you would pass to a section where you could book hotels and lift tickets.
Later trips to France during the days of the Internet cafes saw the French embracing the web. However, there was usually a lonely Minitel somewhere in the back of the cafe.
I went to France in mid 94 and I had the opportunity to actually touch and use a Minitel. I was so happy since I've read about in computer magazines and found it was a great technological implementation, without an equal anywhere else.
Nostalgia is coming up, I never thought I would see it again.
I wish other RUclipsrs would put this kind of effort into their presentation. I don't think I noticed one jump cut there. Good job :D
First adopters - it's a dangerous game. I remember visiting France for the first time in 1977, age 6. Public toilets were holes in the ground still. Phones were like something out of a ww2 black and white movie. It truly was like going back in time. But then they had the best reason to move to electricronic exchanges. This gave them a 5 year lead or so on uk. But by the time we started upgrading our strouger exchanges, system x was out and most exchanges in the uk skipped the now obsolete electronic exchanges. France was now stuck with them. Interesting lessons to learn about the ate getting involved with technological progress - swings and roundabouts for sure
See a case where we got scuppered by being first adopters - DAB.
Got a DAB radio? Ever wondered why pretty much all of the stations are in mono and the few stations that are in stereo sound rubbish if they play on your DAB radio at all?
That's because in the UK, we adopted the original DAB system based on EBU Eureka 147, where the standard was to the use MP2 codec which actually predates MP3. Because we went with that we got stuck with an inefficient codec which has to go mono at 80kbps.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, they held back on the DAB standard until DAB+ came out which is based on the AAC codec. The tiny handful of non-BBC stations that are in stereo and don't play on old DAB radios in the UK broadcast in DAB+ but because there are still al lot of old AAC incompatible DAB radios out there, most of the bandwidth goes to the ancient MP2 stations and the DAB+ station are forced to broadcast at 24kbps.
And they wonder why we hold onto our FM radios!
In Sweden DAB is pretty much dead because it doesn't offer enough advantages over regular FM radio. I think skipping out for now was the right call.
They could quite easily move to DAB 2.0 if they really wanted
Japan, of all countries, actually has a serious problem with this sort of thing. Post WWII, the Japanese have been pioneering adopters of a lot of new technologies, and that goes for infrastructure as well. In the 1970s through the early 1990s, especially, when Japan's economy was in its "bubble" period, a lot of what at the time were very high-tech solutions for problems other countries were only beginning to grapple with were implemented. The problem is, while they were often implemented on a massive scale, they were usually not the best solution, merely the first. Of course, then the Japanese Asset Bubble burst, and Japan was left with a raft of expensive, aging, and increasingly obsolete technological infrastructure that they no longer have the funds to fully update or replace.
I miss my MiniTel from my time in Paris. I could book cabs (Taxis G7), theatre and train tickets, send messages. LOVED it.
I was there working for Netscape in 1996-1998 and ironically we helped bring the internet to the masses which caused it to be quickly surpassed. ISDN lines were easily available and much faster data rates made internet access a no-brainer.
in italy we had the VideoTel. . but i don't know much how was popular. back then i was too young
The clunky plug shown at the outset is called a « prise gigogne » - said of objects that stack into one another. The reason I happened upon this article in the first place is I found myself seated on a terrace with a friend, and the building across the street had a very prominent street number displayed : 3615 - which prompted me to launch into the long and extraordinary tale of the Minitel.
Crikey mate.. you'll be asking me to demo Packet Radio BBS systems on 144MHz next! ... That was the beginning of the internet! Radio Hams!
+Dubious Engineering if you set it up I'll dial it in 🖒
Dubious Engineering
Hmm. I don't think this will end well.
ruclips.net/video/iRsycWRQrc8/видео.html
ElectronAsh I’m away on business in turkey and can’t watch it... but... you’re probably right!!!! ... :-)
I didn't even know this even existed. It is amazing they had something like this in the early 1980s.
Fancy late model you got yourself here... most had a folding keyboard that would fold back over the screen and latch at the top, making it an almost perfect cube while not in use, to free desktop real estate. Considering the per minute pricing scheme, I can tell you most of the time those things were turned off !
I can imagine they were both off and unplugged from the phone socket! I wanted a model specifically with the rear port to play with so mine is a 1989 model. Fancy like.
Well, it remained plugged because of the phone directory. I can remember dialing 11 a lot (36 11 came only later - in the beginings, minitel phone directory was right there with the vocal phone directory [12], medical emergency [15], police [17] and fire service [18].)
As an American I was always so fascinated by and envious of Minitel, except for the per-minute charges. That never would have flown with my mom. And I'm not surprised it was that same greed by the phone company that slowed down the migration of those services to the Internet. And super awesome that there are still hobbyist BBS-style servers you can log into with it! I ran a BBS back in the day and have been meaning to look into how to set one up for access via Telnet, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Also looking forward to you connecting a Raspberry Pi to the serial port.
I've been living in Germany since 1985, yet I don't recall ever hearing of our neighbour country's Minitel. Thanks for teaching me something new!
I heard about this, once. It was kind of a French pre-Internet system, only everybody had one! Vive la belle France!
I remember seeing this type of Minitel terminal on the Computer program when they looked at Prestel and BBS's that you could access with the BBC Micro.
Nice video !!
I remember when i was young , i had some kind of cable to connect my amiga to the minitel.
I used it to download demos and games through kermit at a speed of 2kB/s.
That was amazing !
I lived in France for a year in 2000 - 2001 one of the few regrets I have is not getting a Minitel set while there!
You pretty much can get one in car boot sales dead cheap these days because obviously they are obsolete... www.leboncoin.fr/annonces/offres/?th=1&q=minitel
That was great. As someone who grew up during the computer revolution here in the states I do enjoy these retro videos. I saw a lot of innovation being stifled in the early days because voice traffic was such a huge cash cow for the phone companies here in the states. This is a level beyond and can show what government involvement can do to impede progress.
I always had a soft spot for this tech. It's not well known, but a version of Minitel called Teledon was briefly trialled in Canada, supported by Bell Canada and units were rolled out to a number of libraries, and places like the Arts, Science and Technology centre (now Science World) in Vancouver. This was purely amazing to my 10 year old self, and luckily for me there was not only the interesting but not useful for a 10 year old's services but also a TON of games you could log into and play. Most were turn-based "Choose your own adventure" or gambling games but I remember one space-based strategy game like Oregon Trail in space which was amazing. So many ways to die from your hydroponic pant bays turning Day of the Triffids on you, or being sliced up by the lasers of a hostile alien spaceship (And these fast drawn and animated colourful graphics were beautiful then) and best of all, there were no fees charged per-minute or otherwise, so me and my smart proto-computer geek friends would get the connection code numbers for the games from the librarian and junkie out for hours on them. What a shame it never got past the trial stage here. The Teledon trial started up as far as I can recall in 1981 and ended a year later.
When you tech Internet without Computers in Civ5. (2:40)
13:55 The bell tolls for Minitel.
Just found this video, and brings back memories from when I was an IT techy at a college in Kent in the early 90's. We had a European Employment Service (EurES) department, and the manager was French, and she brought a Minitel terminal in to the office, and I had to set it up on our PABX system ...from what I recall the keyboard folded up in to the screen. I can't remember what model it was though. I believe it also had a serial port, which I had to setup and connect to an Epson dot matrix printer. It was used to access the EurES french employment vacancies, but it wasn't long before this was replaced with a dial up service via a PC
You made me remember the teletext. My father did a lot of things using the teletext on the tv, like a primitive internet, and I always complained about the "primitive" graphics, because I wanted it to look like a NES or Mega-Drive (OK it was already 1992 or so) . I think here in Spain it arrived in late 1980's.
I wish America had had teletext!
Ah, older technology holding up introduction of newer stuff. Isn't that always the way?
Minitel delayed the internet in france, even though Minitel was far ahead of it's time...
Meanwhile, over in Brittain, the railways were there before anyone else, yet the long term consequence appears to be that Brittain's rail network is worse than that of other European countries...
When you already have something, the incentive to replace it with something better, or upgrade it to higher standards ends up being lower it seems...
Minitel... Definitely didn't know much about it, but in hindsight, after hearing what it is, I suspect I may have used it once or twice while visiting france.
It's one of those things - you don't remember it that well even though you've used it - but because it wasn't an everyday thing I encountered, those few experiences were soon forgotten...
Ah well...
Isn't that just the truth. Especially when it's in the hands of a monopoly who doesn't quite know what to do when competition finally arrives.
Hey, I know this thing! Techmoan features it in his puppet segments all the time!
V. Sigma yeah and I always wondered what the heck that thing was.....
Aaaah is that what it is 😃
Nope. That's a Commodore 64. He made a video on it..
Colin Johnston I think the all the time part of the comment is probably a bit exaggerated and you are both right. I’ve seen the SX-64 and what looks like a Minitel 2 in use by the RUclips pedant sections. In the latest video you can see the machine that looks to me like the Minitel 2 and not the SX-64:
ruclips.net/video/KgTcKeefcbU/видео.html
Thanks for turning me in to a RUclips pedant 😃
Paul Briers i hadn't seen that one but it's still not a minitel. It has a seperate keyboard where as the minitel is all in one. However after watching the video i just noticed techmoan himself has just commented below that he owns a uk version called an alketel 257. It might be that.
And of course, every country with their state owned telecom companies had to have their own standard. In Germany it was BTX, in Switzerland we had Videotex, Minitel in France and so on ...
And the UK had PRESTEL.
Netherlands had Viditel
I don't know about Netherlands's system, but the french network (Minitel), the UK network (Prestel) and other network from europe share the same norm, called "Vidéotex". As long i know, UK use the first option of that norm, France the second, Germany have used a modified option 2. Japan has also had a Vidéotex network (Captain), but based on option 4 "alpha-photographique".
Yes, CEPT-1 through 4--but as far as I know, these weren't completely compatible with each other. As it was still the age of nationalized telecom markets, each country went it's own way.
The same way as every other company ties their customers into their own services. iMessage is only for apple devices. They could have easily agreed upon a international standard for direct instant messages with the same features.
My father moved from minitel to the internet in 2006 because he had to do it for his work.
I remember how he spent hours in my bedroom because the only free phone socket available was there.
He mostly used it to play "Question pour un champion", a french TV game show that released its equivalent minitel game.
He also played a strategy board game with his friends by sending instructions over a year though minitel and phone.
They all had their board at home to replicate others moves.
I have never used the Minitel myself because i'm "too young" (23 years old) for that and my father didn't allow me to use any interactive screen before i was 12 anyway.
Ho.. ofc i'm french :)
thanks for the time capsule, i'm french and it was a delight to remember all of this... but not the crazy high phone bills my parents had to pay as i was using 3614 RTEL, an IRC equivalent full of old school geeks and nerds. cheers !
great video. I have always wanted to hear more first hand experience of the minitel.
makes me almost wish I was French. In Australia we did not get the phone book online till the late 90s.
I remember trying to get the exclusive rights to create and host content in Ireland in the early nineties.. Wow blast from the past, thanks
Français :
Bon dieu, le Minitel ! NOTRE BON VIEUX MINITEL ! Cet objet que le monde entier nous a envié dans les années 80/90, avec son fameux 36 15, et son temps de chargement infâme ligne par ligne ! C'est France Télécom qui a dû se faire plein d'argent avec, tellement le prix de la communication était élevé ! Merci de montrer cette partie de l'histoire informatique pré-Internet, et essentiellement française, au reste du monde ! Prochaine étape, montrer les Thomson MO5/6, TO7/8/9 et autres micro-ordinateurs français ?
English :
Damned God, the Minitel ! OUR OLD GOOD MINITEL ! This object the entire world envy us during the 80/90's, with its famous 36 15, and its infamous loading time line by line ! France Télécom (the former public telecom corporation, before they bought Orange in 2000) certainly made a lot of money with it beacause the communication price was so expensive! Thanks to show this pre-Internet part of computing, and essentialy French, to the rest of the world! Next step, show the Thomson MO5/6, TO7/8/9 and others French microcomputers? (by hoping I din't make mistake in translating these words)
+Facy5 I am looking at Thompsons and the Matra Alice, so red, so sexy! France has a lot to show the world with its tech so I'd like to share more of it on the channel in future
RetroManCave Don't forger the Micral, allegedly the first personal computer in the world. True but also the one no one ever heard of.
Bravo for your video. You understood and explained the minitel age very well. We could saw minitel on every post office, and a lot at home too.
I'm doing an e-commerce course and having the chance to see this video was amazing. I really enjoy it. Thank you from México.
I used a free loaner Minitel terminal from South Western Bell in 1989 to book airline tickets on Eassy Sabre. Minitel was tested market in the US but never got a tracking before internet. This brings back lots of old memory.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. I was vaguely aware of the Minitel system, but never seen an in depth review of it. Really reminds me of the terminals in the recent Fallout games!
I remember connecting as far as 2001 when i graduated.. when you had to postulate to a school, or just check your exam results it was all on minitel. When exams results were up, we had a first glance at network lag, watching the text lines appear slowly, hoping the next one will tell you you just got your diploma :p
Given how much the administration lagged behind, the minitel was still used a lot and got totally replaced by internet equivalent services just a few years before service closure.
Edit : i commented while watching and saw that comment on exam results lol
I LOVED Minitel! So advanced at time. I enjoyed using it when in France. Could actually also connect via Internet later.
Fascinating and reminiscent of Prestel which I used for a time. Amazing to think Minitel was still in use just over 5 years ago!
While looking for a unit on eBay, I became aware that there are U.S. units with QWERTY keyboards (still manufactured in France by Alcatel) that were test marketed in the early 90's in the San Francisco Bay Area.
extremely interesting video! It is a sobering thought to think that the success of many technological innovations (minitel, VHS, the web, broadband connections) was in part due to men's unrelenting desire to see (or even just image) lady's private parts :)
why do you think we now have 7 inch waterproof phones??
Pron as a driving force for technology, who knew? But damn efficient for adopting new technologies.
It's really really cool. Never seen one for real.
I remember Arnold booking a trip on a similar method in The Running Man (The French are laughing)
That is glorious! A 1982 teletext terminal, talking to a modern $35 computer. I love it!
It even has a serial port, it was practically made for connecting to unix machines.
+failing@commenting and an 80 column mode. I will be exploring this
failing@commenting Bi-standard models (the ones with a B in the name) were basicaly VT100 compatible terminal. The model 1 is capable of serial communication at 4 800 bit/s (9 600 bit/s for Minitel 2) through the péri-informatique connector (printer port).
It also has an extended ASCII character set very similar to teletext, with a semi-graphic set and colors (or grayscale if the CRT is B&W).
It was powered by a 80C32 controler at 14,31818 Mhz with 256 bytes of RAM and 8kb of DRAM
The 'system' was stored a 256 Kbits EPROM.
It was possible to use it as a cheap modem by sending commands from your computer (usualy your Amiga or Atari) through the serial port. The speed was asymetrical though (300/2400bts) but some models allowed you to reverse to 2400/300 so direct link was possible between 2 minitels.
What an absolutely excellent video on a fascinating piece of technology and history. The minitel is interesting in itself but the story behind it and what it meant in France is more so. I had never heard of this before. To think how far ahead France was for a time. You just don't get stories like this from the modern era with the Globalisation and homogenisation of everything.
Thanks so much for a great video as usual.
Thanks for watching Marc glad you enjoyed it
Matra, the makers of that terminal, were a pretty wide-ranging group of companies. As well as communications they’ve also been involved in Aerospace, Defence (i.e. weaponry), and the Automotive industry.
I know them best from motorsports - among many achievements Matra race cars have won the Le Mans 24 hours race, and the Formula 1 world championship (Jackie Stewart won his first F1 title in a Ford powered Matra in 1969).
Matra have also led the way in passenger cars. Among the many vehicles they’ve produced they basically introduced the people carrier to Europe in the form of the Renault Espace (that they produced for Renault until Renault took production in-house around the turn of the millennium), and could be said to have also invented the modern SUV with the Matra-Simca Rancho (a vehicle that looks like it could do some serious off-roading but was only front wheel drive, and based on the mechanicals of the Simca 1100).
A really forward thinking company with a very interesting history. Now I can add Minitel to the list of things I know they’ve done. Thanks for such an interesting video.
I saw these in Totowa, NJ in 1981. They were "Scansets". I worked for Northern Telecom which was partly owned by the Canadian phone company. As far as I could tell they were never marketed and we had no customers for them .
The first I've heard of it, but very cool! Thanks for sharing.
The Science Museum really should take an interest in your work. It's that good.
I do believe I love the simplistic and direct, neutral competency. It reminds me a lot of that SUV y'all produced back in the eighties, the Talbot Matra Ranchero. Just nice and clean and direct. Bare bones necessity with just the right touches here and there to keep it from becoming actual bare bones. Long live the Empire and all it has given us. 👍🥃
Thank you so much for this! I'm writing a novel partially set in France in the early 1990s, but had no personal experience of Minitel, so all this information is invaluable.
Glad it's your International Data Rate and not mine , He he , Great message left in the Chat , Good to see Services available to Dial into . We have 2 or 3 BBS terminals Here in St.Louis Mo. It is Still fun to Use them . Great Content . Thank You :) QC
I remember hearing about this when it was still used by everyone in France and being so impressed. It seemed so modern compared to Australia. Cheers
I worked in France during the late eighties and, among other things, uploaded sports-competition results on to club and regional bulletin boards. It really was a useful 'social network' system as well as the payment side of things which speeded up all sorts of travel bookings. :)
this is amazing! I never knew something like this ever existed. The French did come up with very peculiar things but sadly most of them failed.
Well 25 Millions users, last for 30 years, I'm not sure we can call it a failure
I've just discovered that video. And indeed, as a French, it brings so much memories. I know that some government employees had no other way to do some of their career choices than using the Minitel, even in the mid 00s. It was great until we discovered AOL and other internet services as you said in the video
very interesting! being from Mexico I had no idea this existed. this was a very fun video, although that minitel teardown bit at the end is probably the saddest thing ever... keep researching and posting great videos on retro tech, I'm a recent subscriber but quickly becoming a fan!
Every french family had his minitel, verry useful.
The part where they smashed up Minitel terminals was heartbreaking (and disgusting as a collector).
Unknowing scrap worker chucks another into a landfill (prices of increasingly rarer to find Minitel skyrocket!)
I worded it wrong. I just hate that all those minitels could've been used by a collector as a RPI terminal or a cool piece. Good thing that they are pretty widely available on eBay. For now. Still a shame.
Generic Green Squid I understood your sentiment, they're a remarkable piece of technology for the time, I'd definitely pick one up if I had the space but it was a shame that they weren't repurposed as from what I'm reading at the time they could do much more than the average PC on dial-up
@@genericgreensquid6669 Sadly no longer the case. Only one available on Ebay and it's three figures.
I was using Prestel in 1995 to do my banking via HOBS from Bank of Scotland. It was great for its time. Also Prestel was used a lot by Travel Agents for booking holidays etc.
Graeme Hill
My very first holiday abroad (to Mallorca) was booked using our Amstrad CPC 6128 and modem around 1988. ;)
Dad used an ABTA number that we "borrowed" from a terminal screen at the Travel Agents, so we managed to skip the booking fees. lol
A small reminder that Ireland offered a public Minitel service on similar lines (operated by then monopoly telco Telecom Eireann). The plug was pulled in 1992.
Wow. Great video of a piece of history. How far we've come. I grew up in the 80's and most everything was electronic but it was analog. Something like this in 1987 for me, would have been incredible.
I feel like it was such an amazing project, and it definitly catched up for years and years before the internet
Interesting tidbit: Here in Quebec where they tried to emulate anything "France" at the time, the phone company came out with a local variant of the Minitel called AlexTel. It ran from 1988 to 1994 and flopped big time. The content was severely limited and cost per minute extravagant so adoption never really picked up.
I've used these in France for years! It was neat and better than the computer in the house at the time...
I kind of want of buying a Minitel terminal now, as a serial terminal for my currently headless server.
Awesome video, here in Brazil I remember my father using this system (we called as Video Texto) and I have in my memories when I was still a child, of my father using this service to consult his bank account, consult some live stock information. Good memories.. Great content.. I always wondered to know how this kind of services worked outside here.. Thanks for the content.. You can also in a future episode, buy one of these and put a raspberry pi inside it and use the keyboard and CRT to control the PI, that also would be awesome.
+Marcelo Frau yes this is part of the same kind of videotex family as your father used. I will certainly be conncecting it to a Pi but well use the serial port instead of breaking it. Although I would like to look inside and see what is in there
It's actually a full duplex connection. I've been involved at bit in the German version of it based on Bildschirmtext. Bildschirmtext is capable of more graphics so you actually have high resolution images. There is of course a Wikipedia gateway.
I lived in one of the US cities that had minitel 101 online int he 90's. It was an interesting and educational time; life changing to be honest.
It's hard to do a proper demo considering the service has been phased out in 2012. To dial in back in the day you had to call 3615 and then choose the name of the site you wanted to reach. People used it to get train times, chat, and all sorts of service really like a pre internet system, but it was rather expensive to stay connected for too long. 3615 was the regular number, I remember there was also 3616 and 3617 which you can connect on at premium rates!
Never knew about this. Ever. Amazing. And to think it lasted as long as it did....
Never had anything like that here in the states, that's for sure. I know my younger self would have been all over that in the 90's had I grown up in France.
The U.S. had hundreds of dial-up-modem-accessible, hobbyist-run bulletin board systems (see the "Bulletin Board System" article on Wikipedia) and commercial non-Internet-based, walled-garden online services (such as QuantumLink, the precursor to America Online (or "AOL", as it is now known!)), though.
Just wanted to congratulate you on your production values! Your videos along with the content being fab are made to such a high standard they could be confused for a TV documentary. Well done that man :)
I remember using it when I was a child :) my parents still have their minitel somewhere... Thanks for that video ! Nostalgia :)
+ikhnaton thanks for watching. I obviously didn't have one growing up but somehow got nostalgic about it!
+ikhnaton thanks for watching. I obviously didn't have one growing up but somehow got nostalgic about it!
I learned about these in grade school, but I didn't know the full extent of the service and I assumed it was free. I thought it was only a phone directory and a few other very basic services - like basically community info. It was one of those things where I quietly assumed that Europe had a generally superior infrastructure to where I was living in the USA.
I love your channel! I just discovered this haphazardly and I am learning about a ton of tech that I didn't know existed. I'd like to think that I'm not completely unaware of things, but this is the first time I have ever heard of the Minitel and I am fascinated.
I remember when these were launched in Ireland at the end of the 80's. I saw very exciting demos on TV, and plenty of advertising but never saw one in the flesh.
Irish Craft Beer Show they were indeed but sadly they didn't have the same head start France had on the web and the timing was bad for release so it flopped quickly
Indeed the minitel was huge! The Web replaced it with many advantages, but it took time to offer the same level of services.
Cool to see another fan of the Wild Palms miniseries. I found it in a Laserdisc box set a couple of years ago.
I remember my grandma looking up train timetables on this thing. And all the commercials on TV for 3615 services. I was a kid back then and we were not allowed to use it because of costs. Had no idea it was still up as late as 2012, though.
Awesome video!!! Subscribed.
I have never been so early on a new video :D Once again, very interesting and detailed description of a technology completely foreign and unknown to me - up until now! Thank you RetroManCave!
I remember when I got my first dial up account around 1994 and I think city wide only about a dozen users could connect at the same time. It was a very rural area. WWW access through the Lynx browser, that I viewed over Windows Terminal.
Here in Italy seems like we had a similar system, the Videotel by SIP (the only national phone company at the time) but it worked differently by charging at first by page, and the cost of the page changed based on who made that page. Because this system was a bit of a scam, and basically those costs went to weight down over the SIP company, the phone company itself decided to switch to a by-minute pricing, but far too late.
It wasn't really successful, same as like Italy never really got into Pagers, but went directly to cellular cervice like TACs
I always liked your uploads, but this time you made me speechless, I love it!!
+Takeshi Nakagawa very kind thank you for watching Takeshi!
I had several MiniTel products although I was here in the US, and I LOVED them!
What happened to them?