WI 1970's/1980's home terminal timesharing instead of personal microcomputing?

Well, in its heyday Minitel also had pr0n and shady craigslist like deals.

Brings me to another good question: how would a national timesharing service police itself? How could some of the financial and personal tragedies that have resulted from craigslist be effectively countered in this ATL system? How did France Telecom police Minitel?

I don't know, but I do know that the porn was taxed very heavily by the French government (probably in an effort to discourage people from using it).
 
reformedcpmuser – welcome to the Board!

Dang, I should not be doing this as it’s 10:30 at night (at least it was when I read this thread) and I have a bunch of other stuff to do before bedtime. But I was there. I was doing engineering and operations for some of the Baby Bell X.25 networks starting in the early or mid 1980s. I remember studying the Minitel service as a model for potential Bell videotex services.

I think some of the other posters have covered the issues as to why an American videotex (easier to use than “consumer terminal-based timesharing”) service did not take off in the 1970s. The technology was not there. The Bell System could not price a service which met both its own and its customers’ cost/benefit needs. (In fact, it wasn’t there in the ‘90s, either) I’m pretty sure the French PTT was nationalized at the time Minitel was introduced (early 1990s), and the PTT had a different set of rules for developing, pricing, and justifying the service.

The sticking point we always reached in our 1980s public data networks was the cost of switching and multiplexing customer data. The technology of that decade was too expensive to successfully market to many businesses, let alone consumers.

The fun question becomes: what kind of Point of Departure does one need in order to make such a service plausible? The first thing I’d try is to make some equipment manufacturers a little more aggressive after the Carterphone decision (1968). The industry needed at least a decade’s advance in data transmission and switching technology, so that there was better (price for performance) equipment available in 1984.

The timeline might include some earlier pioneering projects at major universities (terminals were just getting out of the data centers when I was a college freshman in 1976). I suggest the universities because they could plausibly make an earlier leap to private voice exchanges (private branch exchange or PBX), customer-owned cabling, and generation of tech-savvy adults upon graduation. This might get some earlier development of directly wired dial modems and of data/voice multiplexed transmission, as well as drive down the cost of data switches and multiplexers. The HPC might still be driven by dial modems, but the technology needs to be less costly in order to be viable – at least in the Bell System.

One sure question is whether the advances in data transmission and switching can take place without simultaneously advancing the personal computer. In OTL, dumb ASCII (sorry, couldn’t’ resist) terminals were the norm in the mid-1970s and early “smart” terminals (Wyse ASCII) (sorry again) were not “smart” enough to hold even rudimentary programs. It is possible that an earlier PC might be commercially viable in the late 1970s in this time line, perhaps a year or two after the rollout of the videotex service.

The Bell System breakup in 1984 is still a critical event in the ATL because innovation exploded at that point. The rise of interconnecting data networks will come much more closely behind the OTL rise of voice networks. The trend towards higher performance transmission and switching (routing, eventually) of data will probably also be ahead of OTL.

The long-term effect to consider is whether the early development and greater penetration of Home Phone Computing (which is probably based on X.25 / X.75) hurts the development of the IP-based Internet.
 
reformedcpmuser – welcome to the Board!

Thanks! Yours is a great post. You have a wealth of information.

I’m pretty sure the French PTT was nationalized at the time Minitel was introduced (early 1990s), and the PTT had a different set of rules for developing, pricing, and justifying the service. [...] The sticking point we always reached in our 1980s public data networks was the cost of switching and multiplexing customer data. The technology of that decade was too expensive to successfully market to many businesses, let alone consumers.

Yet, I think that Minitel was introduced by the mid 1980s. However, I take your word for it. Perhaps the service did not take off until the mid 1990's.

From what I understand, France Telecom completely revamped their system to accommodate the technology needed for videotext. Supposedly in the 1970s the French telco system was one of the weakest among the developed countries. Minitel was part of the modernization plan.

Question is: how could the French redesign their system for videotext and keep costs down? A nationalized corporation in a soft-socialist country doesn't necessary need to follow bottom lines though.

The fun question becomes: what kind of Point of Departure does one need in order to make such a service plausible? The first thing I’d try is to make some equipment manufacturers a little more aggressive after the Carterphone decision (1968).


What's Carterphone? More specifically, how does Carterphone play into both OTL and ATL technological developments?

I suggest the universities because they could plausibly make an earlier leap to private voice exchanges (private branch exchange or PBX), customer-owned cabling, and generation of tech-savvy adults upon graduation.


Perhaps at the time. Nowadays I see a technological stagnation at universities, even at the most basic end-user level. The university I work at has just one bank of Ubuntu Linux/GNOME computers locked away in a computer lab. IT is clueless about advanced operating systems (known from personal experience. I'm in humanities and even I can run linux on all my boxes.) Perhaps there was more interest and expertise in computer networking, protocol, and operating systems in the late 1970's. Now there's a laxity that's sort of disturbing.

One sure question is whether the advances in data transmission and switching can take place without simultaneously advancing the personal computer. In OTL, dumb ASCII (sorry, couldn’t’ resist) terminals were the norm in the mid-1970s and early “smart” terminals (Wyse ASCII) (sorry again) were not “smart” enough to hold even rudimentary programs.


"dumb" and "smart" were the terms used. No shame there.

(Even as late as) the early/mid 90's I worked as a high school gopher at a public library. The Wyse terminals were connected to two networks: one to run the digitized card catalog, the other to run a barcode scan system for circulation. I had a chance to visit the library recently; the entire system runs on clone pc boxes now. The Wyse catalog front end would probably be sufficient for basic word-processing. Would it be affordable to expand that system beyond specialist applications such as municipal computing networks?

It is possible that an earlier PC might be commercially viable in the late 1970s in this time line, perhaps a year or two after the rollout of the videotex service.

Altair 8080s, perhaps? There would need to be a way to automate the bootstrapping. I can't imagine someone sitting at home, flicking switches to get their lightbox to run correctly. Scenes of PDP's flicker through my head :)

The Bell System breakup in 1984 is still a critical event in the ATL because innovation exploded at that point. The rise of interconnecting data networks will come much more closely behind the OTL rise of voice networks. The trend towards higher performance transmission and switching (routing, eventually) of data will probably also be ahead of OTL.

The long-term effect to consider is whether the early development and greater penetration of Home Phone Computing (which is probably based on X.25 / X.75) hurts the development of the IP-based Internet.

I'll leave you to explain these, as I was not alive or barely sentient at the time.
 
A little background...

... but I'm not starting much earlier than last night:

The Carterphone decision (late 1960s) allowed telecom customers to attach non-Bell System equipment to the Bell Telephone network. The specific item was an acoustic adapter (that is, it held a microphone next to the earpiece of a telephone receiver and vice versa) allowing a non-Bell two-way radio to talk over the landline telephone network. Up to this point, only Bell System equipment could be attached. The ruling specified that other telecom equipment could be connected so long as it did not harm the network. Acoustically coupled equipent clearly was not a problem, but the ruling was extended to allow electrical connection of devices which met specifications which Bell was forced to publish. This was the point at which other manufacturers of telephones could manufacture and sell phones to connect to the Bell network.

I thought of Carterphone as a possible springboard for data manufacturers to increase the pace at which data equipment improved. I also figured that a university campus was a potential testbed for trying out a start-from-scratch data network.

The X.25 and related protocols were the underlying data protocols for public data networks in use in much of the world in the 80s and 90s. It was a very tough sell in the US, but did somewhat better in Europe.

The key result of the Bell System divestiture in 1984 was the forced competition in telephone / terminal equipment and in long-distance voice and data services. In our time line this led to the rise of data services such as Compuserve and Prodigy. The providers could buy a bank of dial lines, arrange for subscribers to dial in from their home modems, and provide their own modem equipment and data multiplexers, connecting cities to their national computer networks via high-capacity (not more than 56 Kbps at first) data circuits. This competition led to an amazing amount of innovation in services, pricing, even "customer experience" factors like the "You've got mail!" announcement.

I could be wrong on when Minitel first hit the French PTT - I was leaning too much on Wikipedia last night.

The terminal references were plays on the phrases "dumb ass" and "wise ass" - but don't tell Jord839, I'll get in trouble. :D
 
... but I'm not starting much earlier than last night:

The Carterphone decision (late 1960s) allowed telecom customers to attach non-Bell System equipment to the Bell Telephone network. The specific item was an acoustic adapter (that is, it held a microphone next to the earpiece of a telephone receiver and vice versa) allowing a non-Bell two-way radio to talk over the landline telephone network.

Why were acoustic adapters so prevalent in the 60's, 70's, and early 80's? Did this have anything to do with the Bell/AT&T specifications? Were "direct" hardware modems too expensive for general use? I remember that the by the time I started working at the library (1994) the 300 bps acoustic coupler modem was no longer used. The 8086 PS/2 model 30 and 386 clone dialed out with 2400 bps internal modems (maybe 9600 bps).

I forgot to mention that the Wyse library catalogs were connected to a county-wide library catalog network. Perhaps the local server was in the basement. I suspect that much of the catalog data (probably the library's collection) resided on this server to speed local catalog retrieval. I remember having to dial out to get to the county server. Probably 1200 or 2400 bps max.

When the library got 486's/early Pentiums the library sysadmin experimented with a 6-disk CD changer for digitized periodicals. The library director balked on internet access because he did not trust filtering software. Hence, the library had to go with annual update CD's. The library now has a bank of PC clones running XP with broadband, but that was only instituted after the director retired. :(

Anyway, that's OT. I suppose the library just couldn't hold out on internet access forever. There's a calculated risk with internet access in public places, but that shouldn't stop public access to the system.
 
Any POD is going to have to address the issue of phone charges (at least in Europe). No unlimited for a fixed price local calls. Unless this is addressed, any sort of remote working is a non-starter, and desktop PC's will have a tremendous advantage.

Now you need a way of stopping the telephone monopolies from being greedy...(good luck on that one....:()
 
I used to know a couple of people who used dumb terminals and couplers to connect to CompuServe. One guy used one of those little Radio Shack portables. I even had an account there myself. You could do almost anything once you connected - talk on forums, play multiuser onine games, send messages to other CIS users and some other systems like CIS, store files in your own secure area, share files with others, and download from public areas. You could search the US Copyright Office and some other public databases, or follow the gateway to Lexis/Nexis, or you could even send FAXes, or use the online word processor and have your letter printed out on a letter-quality daisywheel printer, folded, put into an envelope, stamped, and mailed to someone offline. Except for not having inline graphics, you could do most of the stuff people do with the internet now.

The whole thing ran of H&R Block's mainframe farm, and they charged a per-hour connect fee, plus additional fees for other services. All you needed was a dumb terminal and an acoustic coupler, though you could use one of those newfangled "Personal Computers" and fancier software if you wanted.

Compuserve's competition was BIX, GEnie, and Prodigy, though they were all eclipsed in the end by America Online.

All AT&T or Bell would have had to do was set up something similar, and let you add your subscription fee to your phone bill. But they were in the "provide a dial tone" business, not the "do something with the dial tone" business...
 
The whole thing ran of H&R Block's mainframe farm, and they charged a per-hour connect fee, plus additional fees for other services. All you needed was a dumb terminal and an acoustic coupler, though you could use one of those newfangled "Personal Computers" and fancier software if you wanted.

What was the per minute cost of CIS at this time?

I do remember the Rat Shack portable computers. They were in effect the first netbooks. I always though that those computers were little more than fancy calculators. I guess that they were useful for more things than that.

I also wonder about the ratio of dumb terminal users to PC users.
 
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