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It was the late 1970s. Former French presidents Charles de Gaulle and George Pompidou had recently died. The Arab oil embargo caused energy prices to quadruple for a time. Marseille remained gripped by drug lords. And France had to face the fact that its telephone network was one of the worst in the industrialized world. Fewer than 7 million telephone lines served 47 million French citizens, and the country?s elite felt that the domination of U.S. firms in telephone equipment, computers, databases, and information networks threatened their national sovereignty. Or at least it damaged their cultural pride. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now that everyone uses the Internet daily, it?s getting hard to recall the magic of logging on to an online service back when they were new. Happily enough, we've got Julien Mailland [standing] and Kevin Driscoll, who?ve been researching the history of France's pioneering Minitel telematics system and who wrote "The French Connection Machine" in this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a retrospective of the Minitel telecommunications system after the devices were discontinued on June 30, 2012. Topics discussed include the practical applications for the Minitel, in which users could buy groceries, send mail electronically, and read the news, a discussion of why the device was not successful outside of France, and how the advent of the cheaper Internet ended interest in Minitel