Death of an invention

It was France’s first glimpse of an online future. But now, 30 years after it was invented, the wired experiment that foreshadowed the World Wide Web is about to lose its connection once and for all

or hello, who are you?)

But Minitel, compared with the web, had many limitations. The terminals were not computers. They could not analyse or store information. They could not randomly “search” the network. They could only call up the addresses of the 25,000 or more services officially affiliated to the system. Access was pay-as-you-go or by subscription and — especially in the case of the sex lines on the “Minitel Rose” or “pink Minitel” — could be very expensive.

The imminent demise of the Minitel has produced a surge of reminiscences on the early days of the service.

Minitel had rivals in other countries, even before the Internet spread around the globe. There was Ceefax in Britain and NAPLPS in the United States. But none of these systems were as comprehensive or effective as Minitel.

But France never managed to sell the Minitel technology abroad. The US took a great interest in the French invention in the 1980s but declined to buy it. By the 1990s, the Internet was on the way.

Even today, some French people still insist on the superiority of Minitel over the Internet.