Jun 30, 2012 6:30 AM

Gallery: Before the Web, AOL, and Prodigy, There Was Minitel

01
minitel-2
*Before the world wide web, the French were on Minitel (Credit: believekevin/Flickr)*
02
prestel
*Great Britain gave the world Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web. But it also gave us PresTel (Image: Martin Deutsch/Flickr)*

03
alextel
*Canada and Bell Labs unveiled their Alex online service just in time to be crushed by the web (Credit: PC Museum CA)*
04
videotex-minitel-japan
*Minitel, translated into Japanese (Image: believekevin/Flickr)*

05
prodigy
*Only online prodigies used Prodigy.*
06
aol
*You Used To Have Mail! (Credit: JoelOgon/Flickr)*

07
bildschirmtext-2
*Yes, Bildschirmtext was Germany's answer to Minitel (Credit: WikiCommons)*

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