The Minitel 1B (bistandard) TELIC was produced by Telic (Téléphonie Industrielle et Commerciale)-Alcatel in 1986. The Minitel 1B followed the production of the Minitel 1 (1982), with manufacturers producing their own variations of the model including La Radiotechnique Industrielle et Commerciale, Matra and Phillips, alongside Telic-Alcatel. The Minitel videotext system was conceived in the labs of the Centre national d’etudes des telecommunications (CNET) and the Centre commun d'études de télévision et télécommunications (CCETT) in 1972, under Gérard Théry, then France Telecom’s general manager. Users connected to Teletel network through the Minitel terminal with a telephone line and modem. The first Minitel Terminal, needed to access the videotext system, was distributed for free to households in France from 1983 to encourage and promote use of the service, with the 1B model reaching circulation from 1986. Minitel is abbreviated from Médium interactif par numérisation d'information téléphonique, and was coined by French designer Roger Tallon.

The Minitel Research Lab (Julian Mailland and Kevin Driscoll) define the Minitel 1B as one of the most ‘prevalent variations of the original terminal’ and was an iconic and popular household model in France. The mass-produced Minitel 1B consists of a hard moulded plastic case which accommodates the electron guns of the built-in cathode-ray tube, with a glass screen, a plug for power, and a plug to connect to the French telephone network. The AZERTY keyboard is attached on a hinge, which can be folded up towards the screen after use. The keyboard itself was designed under the leadership of Jean-Paul Maury, at the time the head of the digital phone book projects at the Direction Générale des Télécommunications (now France Telecom), in collaboration with the research teams of CNET and CCETT.

An advancement from the first models, the Minitel 1B was equipped with new keys, including Fnct and Ctrl to change certain parameters such as upper case and lower case letters, and able to display 80 columns of text. In addition, the ‘B’ in 1B comes from the hardware’s status as ‘bistandard’ because it can operate in Videotex mode (24 lines of 40 characters) or VT52 (24 lines of 80 characters). Although a ‘dumb terminal’ in that it has no internal processing capability, the Minitel 1B was the first model to allow the user to ‘flip’ the transmission rates, otherwise known as returning the modem, allowing for large amounts of information to be transmitted over the network.

Minitel rivalled the introduction of the internet in the early 90s in France, and is often suggested to be responsible for the slow adoption of the World Wide Web by French users due to its popularity. At its peak nine million Minitel terminals were installed in households, with an estimated 25 million users and 26,000 services available. Many attempts to bring the Minitel to other countries were made, including the USA, but ultimately failed due to lack of infrastructure, telecoms bureaucracy and limited public demand.

Anyone could host a Minitel service and could connect to privately as well as publicly run services, accessible with the prefix 3615 (or 3617 for premium charges), 3614, 3613 and 3612, making Minitel the first open network. Services included, but were not limited to, theatre reservations and banking, multiplayer gaming, dating and messaging. Newspaper companies were offered the first consumer services in reaction to their concerns that electronic news services would make printed newspapers redundant.

Minitel’s most infamous, and perhaps most lucrative, group of services was ‘Minitel Rose’. Adult-oriented and aggressively marketed, these ‘pink chat rooms’ allowed users to date, circulate pornography, and anonymously live chat with other adults, often with astronomical phone bills as a result. Software robots, otherwise known as ‘ghosts’, allowed service owners to simulate conversation with fictional women, in turn allowing for more ‘clients’ and therefore credit card charges, similar to the bots revealed to be operational on adult site Ashley Madison almost thirty years later. Male operators for Minitel rose services often posed as female in order to attract further revenue, while simultaneously moderating conversations for criminal or ‘undesirable’ activity.

On 30 June 2012, France Telecom shut down the Minitel network, with an estimated 400,000 still regularly using the service.

The Minitel 1B is of importance to the Museum due to its significance in early digital design around telecommunication and information networks, and its historical appearance alongside the internet outside of US and UK usage, adding a global perspective alongside other Museum objects including X-TIGI S18 mobile phone and social media platform WeChat.