How a nation that invented the pre-web built its own rules for the network age
Before the Web, There Was Minitel
In 1982, while most of the world was still figuring out what a modem was, France launched something remarkable: Minitel. Operated by France Télécom under the state’s Direction Générale des Télécommunications, Minitel was a nationwide videotex network that gave French households a terminal, a phone line, and access to an online world — over a decade before the World Wide Web existed.
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