Videotex

Minitel was perhaps the most successful videotex service worldwide. This Minitel 1 terminal was an early device used for connecting to Minitel.

Videotex (or interactive videotex) is the generic term used, but not formally approved (as at end 1979), by CCITT for a two-way interactive service emphasizing information retrieved, and capable of displaying pages of text and pictorial material on the screens of adapted TVs.

2.   Videotex was one of the earliest implementations of an "end-user information system". From the late 1970s to mid-1980s, it was used to deliver information (usually pages of text) to a user in computer-like format, typically to be displayed on a television. In its broader definition, videotex can be used to refer to any such service, including the Internet, bulletin board systems, online service providers, and even the arrival/departure displays at an airport. In a more limited definition, it refers only to two-way information services, as opposed to one-way services such as teletext. However, unlike the modern Internet, all traditional videotex services were highly centralized.

3.   The first attempt at a general-purpose videotex service were created in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s. In about 1970, the BBC had a brainstorming session in which it was decided to start researching ways to send closed captioning information to audience. As the Teledata research continued, the BBC became interested in using the system for delivering any sort of information. In 1972, the concept was first made public under the new name Ceefax. Meanwhile, the General Post Office (soon to become British Telecom) had been researching a similar concept since the late 1960s, known as Viewdata.

4.   Unlike Ceefax which was a one-way service carried in the existing TV signal, Viewdata was a two-way system using telephones. Not to be outdone by the BBC, the General Post Office also announced their service, under the name Prestel. ITV soon joined the fray with a Ceefax-clone known as ORACLE. In 1974, all the services agreed to a standard, called CEPT1, for displaying the information. The display would be a simple 40x24 grid of text, with some graphics characters for constructing simple graphics. This standard did not define the delivery system, so both Viewdata-like and Teledata-like services could at least share the TV-side hardware (which at that point in time was quite expensive). The standard also introduced a new term, teletext, that covered all such services.

5.   Some people confuse videotex with the Internet. The two technologies actually evolved separately and reflect fundamentally different assumptions about how to computerize communications. The Internet in its mature form (after 1990) is highly decentralized, while videotex was almost always highly centralized, with a single company building and operating the network. The Internet as we know it today was still in its infancy in the 1970s, and it would take another decade of hard work to transform the Internet from an academic toy into the basis for a modern information utility.  more... at Wikipedia