Introduction
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The Minitel is a French invention of the late 70ies, which can be considered as the precursor
of nowadays Internet, with respect to allowing individuals either at work or at home to have
access to online services by the mean of a global network.

The underlying network was based on the standard phone lines of the subscriber, since the
Minitel was designed to be connected to the phone wall socket using a piggyback plug,
so that the phone stayed connected to the line and was used as usual when the terminal
was not in use.

The Web is full of detailed documentation about the technical aspects, the services offered,
the business model used by the service providers,... Just enter Minitel on Google and you will
be served. A good entry point is Wikipedia : <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel>

Since the Teletel network has been definitively shutdown on June 30th 2012, Minitels are
now useless for their initial usage. However, a lot of vintage equipment fans have kept their
units (me included ;), and since most of the available models were equipped with a DIN socket
giving access to the serial link which can be used in place of the embedded Teletel modem, it is
possible to give a second life to this thing of the past by connecting it to all the
contraptions you can imagine. Once again, the Web is full of examples.

This package has been created for such an usage, in the context of a vintage demos for scientific
exhibitions.