He participated in the creation of Minitel in France when he was Director General of Telecommunications from 1974 to 1981. The polytechnician Gérard Théry died on July 18 at the age of 88, we learned from the civil status of the Town Hall from Paris.
Computer specialist, this native of Sallaumines (Pas-de-Calais) in 1933 graduated from the Polytechnic School (1952) then from the National Higher School of Telecommunications (1957).
He spent his entire career in this field, joining the PTT ministry in 1955, and becoming advisor to Minister Jacques Marette in 1966-1967.
Minitel, one of the forerunners of the Internet
He is best known for having worked on the creation of Minitel, one of the forerunners of the Internet.
This cubic terminal giving access to videotext, delivered free with the telephone, was for a long time one of the French flagships before being supplanted in the uses by the World Wide Web and to be extinct on June 30, 2012, 30 years after its commercial launch. .
"The Minitel has not evolved as we would have hoped it would evolve", regretted Gérard Théry, in 2011.
Responsible for the mission on the "IT transition to the year 2000"
"I considered [the Minitel] as a great thing even if it ended in a dead end" he still estimated in 2019, in an intervention with the Association for the History of Telecommunications and Computer science.
After his seven years at the Directorate General of Telecommunications, he continued to be involved in these subjects, and in particular was entrusted in 1994 with a preparatory mission for a bill on electronic highways, then was responsible for the mission on the “IT transition to the year 2000”, in 1998.
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