The Obituary
Minitel gave France a national online service a decade before most people heard of the internet. Rolled out from 1982, France Télécom handed terminals to telephone subscribers for free in place of paper directories, and users dialed into thousands of services: train tickets, bank balances, news, and the famously profitable “Minitel rose” adult chat lines. At its peak it reached around 9 million terminals. Its closed, centralized design that made it succeed early also boxed it in, and the open World Wide Web overtook it. France Télécom switched Minitel off on 30 June 2012.
Worth remembering
- France gave the terminals away free, replacing printed phone directories, which seeded mass adoption.
- The racy 'Minitel rose' chat services were an early and lucrative form of online socializing.
Sources
- Minitel was rolled out in France from 1982 and shut down in June 2012 Wikipedia
- France distributed Minitel terminals free to phone subscribers, reaching millions of households Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.