Minitel: how the Latest News of Alsace invented the social Internet
There is all stack 30 years, hacking of the Minitel service of DNA propelled the computer into a new era. An episode today largely forgotten.
Internet history has swept the minitel, an object today synonymous with phone booth or Bi-Bop. Yet, French telematics has simply invented the social uses of the contemporary Internet.
The inaugural scene takes place in Strasbourg there is everything 30 years ago. In the anonymity of the computer service of the Latest News of Alsace (DNA), a team of sorcerer's apprentices programs its service over hacks and requests from its users, and thus creates the first public communication tools. The commercial reign of 3615 and Pink Minitel a few years later will obscure these innocent beginnings.
The first minitel servers
The first telematic terminals are launched for a local experiment in Vélizy in the Ile-de-France in the summer 1981, under the patronage of the Directorate General of Telecommunications (DGT). A few months later, a more modest experiment was launched in a neighborhood in Strasbourg by the DNAs.
At the time, the 3611 and the 3615 do not exist, the Minitel is summarized for users to a single "site" they join by dialing a phone number. Gretel, the Strasbourg site, wants to be a platform of services. News, horoscopes, weather, television and movie programs, train schedules, banking services, and even a few video games are all available.
A kid hackers the system
The concept, similar to that of Velizy, is revolutionary for the time, but horribly annoying. Imagined by technocrats and restrained by the written press that fears to disappear and let it flourish, the Minitel looks as exciting as the weather page of the Parisian. But after a few weeks of launch, in October or November (difficult to determine), a hacking of Gretel will tip the Minitel into a new era.
To help the users in distress, the developers had set up a mail service allowing them to display a message on the screen of the people of their choice. A boy of about ten years (according to the memories of Michel Lancaret who piloted the platform) manages to use this messaging by discovering the password to access it.
He immediately sends a message to his friends indicating the steps to follow to do the same. In a few days, the handling is completely stale and Gretel developers have only one solution: open the messaging function to all users.
The first cat
Messaging is by far the most used service on the platform. Unexpected problems arise. Users acclimate to the keyboard, which is a tool almost new, and multiply 3 or 4 their typing speed. The waiters are dying. The team of Michel Lancaret progresses blindly, at the rate of user requests and finally manages to stabilize a system that displays on one page the usernames all users connected, with a possibility to address live to each. The first chat room was born.
Internet exists since 1969, the mail dates from 1972, the first forums of 1979, but the general public's grip of the network was born in the cold Strasbourg winter of 1981. One has to imagine the dizziness that seized these first users. Connected under a nickname of their choice, they can talk to strangers who are also connected and free themselves from social uses in real life.
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Source Suite: http://www.slate.fr/story/46415/minitel ... net-social