Minitel - The French machine

It might be hard to believe today but France was once riding the technology wave, with millions of users surfing a prehistoric black-and-white version of the Web with a device called the Minitel. The machine had a small keyboard and hooked up to a phone line. The French used to do everything from looking up phone numbers to searching for apartments and enjoying soft-porn conversations. If proof was ever needed that the French are deeply attached to their traditions, consider this: More than 20 years after the Minitel was invented and despite overwhelming evidence of the Web's superiority, the small brown box still holds a place of choice in more than 20 million French households. Here're some ads for Minitel "sites".