In 1980, France took a step into the future when the telecom companies introduced the Minitel system — a precursor to the Web where users could shop, buy train tickets, check stocks, and send and ...

Most of us who are old enough are likely to have had our first experience of an online service some time in the 1990s, either through the likes of Compuserve or via an ISP. For our French readers the ...

Long before there was the iPhone, users in France had another connected device with which they could do everything from check movie listings or the weather to chatting with other users or booking ...

This essay is divided in two main parts. In the first one, the history of French telematic is briefly exposed. Its protagonist, the «Minitel» terminal, is today present in a great number of French ...

France pulls the plug on the Minitel this weekend, a home — grown precursor of the Internet which brought on — line banking, travel reservations and even sex chats to millions a decade before the ...

PARIS -- Strange but true: The Minitel is still up and running. The clunky French data communications system, which blossomed into the world's first mass-market online network in the 1980s, has found ...

According to Wikipedia, millions of the terminals were handed out free to telephone subscribers in France who then paid by the minute for their dialup use. •Sign up ...

PARIS (Reuters) - France pulls the plug on the Minitel this weekend, a home-grown precursor of the Internet which brought on-line banking, travel reservations and even sex chats to millions a decade ...