“Long before hundreds of millions of homes worldwide began connecting to the Internet in the 1990s, France’s Minitel box, the steam train of the online world, attracted the attention of Apple Inc’s now deceased founder, Steve Jobs,” Brian Love reports for Reuters.
“The clunky Minitel, pulled out of service at the end of June, was used by some 25 million people in France at the time for services ranging from checking the weather to making travel reservations and posting small ads,” Love reports. “‘He bought one and took it to bits to see how it worked,’ Gerard Thery, one of the Frenchmen behind the 1982 launch of the Minitel system, told business newspaper Economie Matin.”
Read more in the full article here.
I used it when I lived in France, and I will tell you it was FANTASTIC for it’s time. Not graphical, but – good, cheap and fast.
Minitel was a cash cow for France Telecom, employing proprietary technology and resisting competing networking schemes, including the Internet, as long as possible; thereby squandering an opportunity for France to seize technical leadership. This according to commenters to the original story in http://www.economiematin.fr
Sounds familiar, somehow…
I used Minitel in Pre-Internet 1990s France to book train travel. It was a revelation, and a glimpse of things to come.
I can see why Steve was fascinated by this simple device.
3615 Ulla
France’s Minitel was not just fantastic, but revolutionary for its time. we now take it for granted. we don’t even give it credit as the precursor of the internet!
shame France missed the chance to take it to the Next step. as usual, inventors, whether Minitel/France Telecom or our u.s. Xerox Parc, as once inventing 1 revolution, sleeping on its laurels in ego, versus pushing it further, sustaining or surpassing the momentum.
the most creatively inventive country, ingenious folk, are the Brits. before you shout, yeah, it’s not our usa, and the reason we don’t hear much of all the british inventions or revolutions, is that 1. we never leave our country to learn this from our stifled politically correct but retarded media, and 2. the Brits suffer from poor seed funds, so their ideas get backed by foreigners who then stamp their Made in XXX on it. Brits don’t get credit. just as happened with Minitel.
anyway, in the end, who cares about who invented what when. what matters is, as with Apple, who never claims to invent, but to do it better. faster. smoother. more reliable. easier. ubiquitous etc.
“Who cares about who invented what when”? Evidently you do.
Britain had/has similar networks. They are called CEEFAX and…….I forget the name of the other one. Basicly they allow you to read and interact with News, Stocks, banking, Advertising and interaction with live programming over the TV network such as voting.
It has been around as long as I can remember…going as far back as early 1970’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax
You’re thinking of Prestel.
That was essentially developed as the UK equivalent of Minitel. It never gained even a tiny fraction of the penetration that Minitel did. That’s largely because of the prevalence of the TV-based teletext services CEEFAX and Oracle, and also because it was damned expensive.
Minitel’s success is largely down to the fact that millions of terminals were given away for free, thus ensuring a large customer-base which made the platform attractive to content providers.
a little history:
Arpanet (1969) US Dept. of Defense
MiniTel (1974 à 1981) 5yrs after Arpanet but 17 years before the web!
here’s the Apple timeline MiniTel influenced since its invention 1974:
eWorld (1994 jun20 > mar31 1996)
– eMail Center + news + bulletin board system or Community Ctr
– 1st proper noun with a lowercase prefix; )
– PC vers planned but entire serv too exp/weak mrktg
iTools (2001-01-05)
iDisk (2000-01-05 > 2012-06-30)
.Mac (2002-07-17)
MobileMe (2008-07-09) since iPhone2; $99/yr 20GB
iWork.com (2009-01-06) beta launched @MW SF
iCloud (2011-10-12 public / jun6 dev) 5G free/$40yr+20G/$100yr+50G;
– only count mail/doc/backup, rest free: iTunes buys+PhotoStream)
great Apple essence resource: http://www.Stevessence.com/blog
36 15 …I remember it well when I lived in France in’88
I remember back in the 70’s as a kid watching a documentary about it and I thought it was pretty cool… I told my dad about it and he asked me how to get it… told him it was only in available in France. Years passed and before he passed away a couple of years ago, he reminded me about it and I had then a vague memory of it and now this article brings it back.
The Minitel was conceived to do away with PRINTING phone books, then expanded for other services!!