MiniMit – Bringing Minitel back to life | Hacker News Reader

MiniMit – Bringing Minitel back to life

xn--multipli-i1a.fr

50 pointsjgrahamc15 comments

This is an interesting article on the history of Minitel [1].

Fun facts, the original lead designer of Cyclades Network (Minitel's competitor) is Louis Pouzin using packet switching technology, instead of circuit switching of Minitel, from which TCP/IP was derived [2]. He's widely considered the 4th Internet guy after Cerf, Kahn and Berners-Lee.

He originally coined the popular keyword "datagram" that described the very nature of the stateless packet switching based network layer packet structure that is known as IP today. The cue of the word "gram" took the name from telegram that embodied the close resemblance of Internet to the messaging architecture of the postal system than the telephone system.

[1]Minitel: The Online World France Built Before The Web:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/minitel-the-online-world-france-bu...

[2]Internet Hall of Fame: 2012 Inductee Louis Pouzin:

https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/louis-pouzin/

Re: Pouzin, datagram, CYCLADES

This was it, even more so than Minitel. France had an experimental, working Internet in the 70's... That was shutdown over bureaucratic disputes.

What a monumental waste.

> That was shutdown over bureaucratic disputes.

> What a monumental waste

So French.

For those who aren't aware, this was a government backed mini internet. Most government agencies had services on it, which were in use until ~2001. You'd check how you did in your French version of the SAT, your school enrolment, it even had basic yellow pages and very archaic remote work functionality. There were expensive servers you could call for porn and gambling as well.

> There were expensive servers you could call for porn and gambling as well.

And one of those adult servers became one of the principal French ISPs and a major telecom company: Free/Iliad.

My parents, when I was a kid, discovered that Minitel had also paid games, billed by the minute. I spent around 100 euros of their money on them.

IIRC in addition to the price of the service, the Minitel was billed by the minute like every phone communication was billed like this. That's why early internet was expensive in France, and it became "free" with DSL connections.

One of the differences between USA/Canada and France/Germany (and perhaps other countries). Local phone calls in Canada/USA are included in monthly phone bill service, whereas in France/Germany, local calls are charged a per minute rate in addition to any monthly phone service cost. I believe local phone-dialup ISPs took off in Canada/USA because of the lower cost.

There was a category of services with the same price as a local phone call. This was one unit every 3 minutes (~10cents) during the day, one every 18 minutes at night. In this price category, I was able to find boards and make friends, talking about Apple II games. There also were free access versions of more expensive sites, provided you knew the X25 address

"Minitel: Welcome to the Internet" is a great book (in English) about Minitel and its history. It's part of the delicious Platform Studies collection of MIT Press: https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780262036221

As as Spaniard I envied the French for this. They got that and here in Spain until 1999/2000 no one properly got Internet at home, and Ibertex (AX25?, same as Minitel) https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex was for loaded companies and executives/CEOs. Yes, we got Teletext from long ago, but that was unidirectional and just for TV,

Wonderful project.

Does anybody knows something about source code release (as stated in the GitHub repo)?

https://github.com/multiplie-fr/minimit

Edit: They are working on a v1.1 and they want to release it soon. Keep following the repo.

including a nod to Ulla (and her 3615 compatriotes): https://player.vimeo.com/video/775486428?h=ee901fb342&app_id...

dang, is support for international domain names on the HN roadmap?

I prefer seeing the punycode version. Even visited the URL to see how it decoded.

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