UK's Prestel Launched in 1979, Previewing Email, Chat and Online Games 10 Years Early
Updated
Updated · The Escapist · May 20
UK's Prestel Launched in 1979, Previewing Email, Chat and Online Games 10 Years Early
1 articles · Updated · The Escapist · May 20
Prestel, commercially launched by British Telecom in September 1979, offered UK users email, message boards, shopping, banking and downloadable software years before the web.
Its interactive edge came from a two-way telephone link—unlike broadcast teletext—with pages delivered at 1200/75 baud, a design built for information retrieval that users quickly turned into a social space.
Micronet 800, started on March 1, 1983 for home-computer owners, became Prestel’s liveliest offshoot; by 1986 it reportedly had 18,000 users making 9 million accesses a month.
That community also foreshadowed modern online culture through chat lines, mailbox messaging and multiplayer games such as Shades, while the 1984-85 Schifreen-Gold hack exposed weak security and helped spur the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Prestel never reached mass adoption—about 24,000 sets by 1984 versus forecasts of 1 million—and Micronet closed in 1991, but both are portrayed as Britain’s early rehearsal for the internet age.
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