© Mark Ollig
Many acknowledge the French Minitel system as the first successful large-scale telecommunications network to provide publicly accessible online services.
In 1978, as part of an experimental telephone service offering, a Minitel data terminal was assembled and tested in Cesson-Sévigné, a town in Brittany, the northwesternmost region of France.
The word “Minite” comes from the French sentence, “médium interactif par numérisation d’information téléphonique,” which translates to “interactive medium by digitization of telephone information.”
During the 1970s, videotex was developed to simplify interactive communication between users and a centralized computer database of information primarily accessible over the telephone network, allowing users to obtain two-way interactive content on a computer screen or video display terminal.
Videotex services could be accessed through a terminal adapter connected to their television sets; however, the service was seldom delivered through over-the-air broadcast television or cable systems.
In July 1980, a videotex interactive service, Minitel, began a trial run in Saint-Malo, France, where about 2,000 experimental Minitel terminals were installed and connected to a user’s telephone line. Later that year, it expanded to telephone households around Paris.
With the success of these experiments, in 1982, the French Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone agency (PTT) began offering its new service throughout France, installing Minitel data terminals at no cost to telephone subscribers, which included free access to online French telephone electronic residential and business yellow page directories and address databases.
The French telecommunications provider reasoned electronic directories were a more cost-effective option than the yearly updates of their printed counterparts.
The Minitel terminals were wired through the telephone network and connected to a mainframe computer.
The computer network used by the Minitel terminal in France is known as Télétel; the two were jointly called Minitel.
As one of the earliest interactive digital videotex networking services, the Minitel online information system was offered to telephone subscribers free of charge.
The Minitel “dumb” data terminal featured a telephone modem, a keyboard with keys resembling the size used on a TV remote, and a nine-inch monochrome display screen with a 40 by 25 character text resolution.
In the 1960s, inexpensive computer data display terminals allowed multiple users to access a corporation’s large mainframe computer. As a result, they became known as dumb terminals.
A dumb terminal is an electronic device that operates using a display screen and keyboard and does not do any actual computing or processing.
Instead, the user types text input commands via the keyboard and sees interactive data on the terminal’s display screen.
This type of terminal was designed to be linked to the mainframe computer doing the heavy number crunching and processing, displaying the computing results on a user’s terminal screen.
The Minitel user terminal did not have a BIOS (basic input/output system) program.
Instead, it contained a ROM (read-only memory) chip with decoder instructions burned in it for keyboard and display functionality and protocols for modem communications.
The Minitel terminal used an Intel 8052 8-bit microcontroller chip with 8 KB of ROM and 256 bytes of RAM (random-access memory) and other semiconductor chips for monitor display management and modem functionality.
Initially built by Alcatel at a low cost, the Minitel user terminal connected to a mainframe computer through the wired telephone network via a V.23 modem, referred to as 1275, due to its download data speed of 1200 bps (bits per second) and upload data rate of 75 bps.
I found a diagram written in French given to the home user installing the Minitel data terminal, which I have attempted to translate into English.
“Comment installer votre Minitel.”
[How to install your Minitel.]
1. Débranchez la prise téléphonique de votre prise murale, et branchez-la sur la prise téléphonique du Minitel.
[Disconnect the telephone plug from your wall socket, and connect it to the telephone socket of the Minitel.]
2. Branchez la prise téléphonique du terminal Minitel sur la prise murale libre.
[Connect the telephone socket of the Minitel terminal to the free wall socket.]
3. Branchez la fiche sur la prise électrique 220 V.
[Connect the plug to the 220 V electrical outlet.]
The instructions then said “Branchement telephonique: en decrochant le combine, vous devez obenir la tonalite. Sinon, verifiez le bon branchement des fiches.”
[Telephone connection: by picking up the handset, you should get the dial tone. Otherwise, check the correct connection of the plugs.]
“Branchement electrique: vous mettez sous tension lecran en appuyant sur linterrupteur marchce-arret. La lettre F saffiche en haut a droite.”
[Electrical connection: you switch on the screen by pressing the on/off switch. The letter F is displayed at the top right.]
And lastly, “et voila.”
[And there you go.]
Sometimes, the French blood from my father’s mother’s side of the family pays off.
Be sure to read next week’s column as we follow the continuing story of Minitel.
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(right-to-use license for this photograph paid) |