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

  • Minitel
    01

    minitel-2

    *Before the world wide web, the French were on Minitel (Credit: believekevin/Flickr)*
  • PresTel
    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)*
  • AlexTel
    03

    alextel

    *Canada and Bell Labs unveiled their Alex online service just in time to be crushed by the web (Credit: PC Museum CA)*
  • Videotex Minitel Japan
    04

    videotex-minitel-japan

    *Minitel, translated into Japanese (Image: believekevin/Flickr)*
  • Prodigy
    05

    prodigy

    *Only online prodigies used Prodigy.*
  • AOL
    06

    aol

    *You Used To Have Mail! (Credit: JoelOgon/Flickr)*
  • Bildschirmtext
    07

    bildschirmtext-2

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