The French Wide Web: the story of Minitel

Minitel 1. Image courtesy of Minitel Research Lab, USA (https://minitel.us/)

In the ’70s, France had a collapsing communications structure, with 7 million telephone lines struggling to accommodate some 47 million subscribers, and long waiting times for new lines — Paris residents had to wait up to 6 months for a new line. Furthermore, the government was eying anxiously the progress being made in the US in the developing computer industry.