One of the very early trials or demo for France Telecom.
Thanks to Alain Knecht for this scan

3 digit controls from L&G are either from series 0 or series 5
Series 0, begins with lowest control 001 to highest seen 123
Series 5, begins with lowest control 501 to highest seen 532 with sub groups used for some of the later numbers ex.523 1, and 523 2 but are still part of the 500 series

One of the very early trials or demo for France Telecom.

3 digit controls from L&G are either from series 0 or series 5
Series 0, begins with lowest control 001 to highest seen 123
Series 5, begins with lowest control 501 to highest seen 532 with sub groups used for some of the later numbers ex.523 1, and 523 2 but are still part of the 500 series

One of the very early trials for France Telecom.
This card has normal strike pattern.
3 digit controls from L&G are either from series 0 or series 5
Series 0, begins with lowest control 001 to highest seen 123
Series 5, begins with lowest control 501 to highest seen 532 with sub groups used for some of the later numbers ex.523 1, and 523 2 but are still part of the 500 series

Very early uncoded DEMO for France Telecom.
The 078 is only ever seen unencoded. Please contact us if you have a coded demo.

One of the very early trials for France Telecom.
This card has a pattern of regular 6 strike groups sometimes seen in laboratory tested cards.

Early design prototype.

This card from the builder of the very first Optical reader Alex Nyfeler.

Probably one of the very first France Telecom cards.

This card from the builder of the very first Optical reader Alex Nyfeler
This card has a pattern of regular 6 strike groups sometimes seen in laboratory test cards, and seems to have been loaded with 120 units.

In the early development of optical phonecards by Landis and Gyr, France was one of the early market goals for L&G. This is one of two type2 laboratory cards manufactured for France. The deep blue was like chosen for the Paris first stage, and Light blue for expanded rollout. France used variations of blue in the L&G cards until 1985 when RED was introduced to allow for less confusion when Generic test and service cards of L&G were changed from RED (Stu11) to BLUE (used for MOST Structures of test and Service). This laboratory design was also used on the prototypes for other countries for the Geneva university trials (green), and other countries (Austria-Yellow, Swiss-Red, Belgium-Orange etc.)

In the early development of optical phonecards by Landis and Gyr, France was one of the early market goals for L&G. This is one of two type2 laboratory cards manufactured for France. The deep blue was like chosen for the Paris first stage, and Light blue for expanded rollout. France used variations of blue in the L&G cards until 1985 when RED was introduced to allow for less confusion when Generic test and service cards of L&G were changed from RED (Stu11) to BLUE (used for MOST Structures of test and Service). This laboratory design was also used on the prototypes for other countries for the Geneva university trials (green), and other countries (Austria-Yellow, Swiss-Red, Belgium-Orange etc.)

In the first years when L&G was investigating the phonecard product, a few magnetic readers were acquired from Hewlett Packard, and installed in payphones to test customer behaviour with the phonecard product.
It is understood that small scale field trials were conducted in the area of Montparnasse, and some of the train stations in the area.
This plain L&G branded card is the only known type that was probably used in this early field trial, or at least was the test card used. Later the Magstripe phonecard phones were used in the Frantel Windsor hotel: HOTEL FRANTEL