[Animats]

The funny thing was that in the US, there was Minitel. But you had to get a terminal, or a PC emulator for one. France Telecom deployed dial-in ports in most US cities. It was popular with French expatriates, because there was no extra charge to reach services in France.

There was a failed attempt by a Silicon Valley company, "101 Online", to deploy Minitel terminals in the US. The terminals were available in electronics surplus stores for years.

[ucs]

That's an interesting tidbit of Minitel lore that I did not know about until today, thanks!

But I'm afraid that even in the DC metro area, among French embassy personnel no less, few people knew about such a thing. We certainly didn't. Most French folks who missed the Minitel just ended up subscribing to one of the major online services of the time, namely CompuServe and Prodigy.

Besides, without the benefit of those giant billboards featuring topless young ladies[1] the Minitel never stood a chance in the US.

[1] Was it 3615 ULLA? ;)

[DanBC]

> We certainly didn't. Most French folks who missed the Minitel just ended up subscribing to one of the major online services of the time, namely CompuServe and Prodigy.

People might not realise just how eye-wateringly expensive these services were.

In 1988 Compuserve charged $11 per hour. (Very roughly, that's $22 today).

I'm not sure what Prodigy charged, but it's amazing how much people used to spend on very slow online connectivity.

http://imgur.com/a/zdoZj