How can we think? Hypertext device from 1945
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We talked about the hypertext Internet project, which was developed by American researcher Ted Nelson back in the 60s of the last century. However, the idea of hypertext itself was born much earlier – it was voiced back in 1945 by Vannevar Bush.
The name Vannevar (in some sources – Vannevar) Bush is well known to anyone who is at least a little interested in the history of IT. Many call him not just a scientist, but a visionary who not only predicted the course of technological development during World War II, but also laid the foundation for modern information technology.
Vannevar Bush
Bush was born on March 11, 1890, in Everett, Massachusetts, the son of a local Christian pastor and a schoolteacher. Bush was educated at Tufts College, graduating in 1913 with a bachelor's degree in engineering. His academic journey did not end there: a year later, he received a master's degree from Tufts and then entered graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but, as the saying goes, “did not get along” with his thesis advisor. Bush eventually defended his doctorate in electrical engineering in 1916, together with graduate students from Harvard University.
After receiving his Ph.D., Vannevar worked for the American Radio and Research Corporation (AMRAD), and after the outbreak of World War I, he invented a device for detecting submarines by disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field. Remarkably, this device worked when installed on a wooden ship, but refused to work on destroyers with metal hulls that shielded magnetic fields.
In 1919, Bush was accepted as a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Mathematical Laboratory, where he began working on analog computing devices. His first significant invention was the differential analyzer, an analog computer that had both electrical and mechanical components. It was capable of solving complex differential equations with 18 independent variables.
In the late 1930s, as the world edged closer to a world war, Bush realized that science and technology would play a critical role in matters of national security. In 1939, he became president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. On August 23, 1938, Bush was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of NASA. But his most important role came in 1941, when he became director of the newly created Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).
Under Bush's leadership, OSRD coordinated the efforts of more than 6,000 American scientists during World War II. One of its most significant contributions during this period was its participation in the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. Although Bush himself was not a physicist, his organizational skills were critical to the project's success.
Memex
After World War II, Bush turned his attention to the future of information technology. In his essay “As We May Think,” published in The Atlantic in 1945, Vannevar Bush introduced the concept of “
“, a hypertext system that would allow people to store and retrieve information with unprecedented efficiency.
Bush envisioned the Memex as an electromechanical device in which a person could store his books, contacts, and take notes. The Memex should have the ability to “deliver the necessary information with sufficient speed and flexibility.” Bush intended to use the Memex as a data carrier in the device's architecture. microfilms.
The concept was based on the ability to create associative links between fragments of information stored in the device. However, unlike later implementations of hypertext systems, Memex did not imply the presence of any links within documents; instead, an index was used – a system of bookmarks leading to static pages of microfilms.
In his essay, Vannevar Bush describes the Memex as a device consisting of a microfilm reader, a set of photocells, and controls that would allow the user to store a personal library (of scientific papers, of course), annotate them with personal notes, and quickly retrieve information on demand that the Memex owner wishes to share with other scientists. All of this would be built into a fairly large desk.
Navigation through books and records was to be facilitated by a system of bookmarks-links built into Memex, simulating the associative processes of the human mind. It was based on a set of code symbols, the sequence of which was placed on the microfilm tape next to the corresponding block of information, and the list of such “bookmarks” was entered into a special index table. The search for the desired mark would be performed automatically using photocells: the reel with the microfilm would scroll at high speed and stop as soon as the photocell detected the desired mark.
These same tags were to be used to create an index, a cross-reference catalog that would provide navigation through the Memex system's content. Bush wrote, “Memex would use microfilm storage, dry photography, and analog computing to provide postwar scientists with access to a vast indexed repository of knowledge, any section of which could be called up with a few keystrokes.” The top of the table that served as the base for the device contained two screens for reading the microfilm contents, as well as a special transparent panel. The user could place, for example, a note on it, press a special lever, and the Memex built-in camera would take a photograph of the microfilm recording, supplying it with the appropriate alphanumeric code. This code would immediately be entered into the index table, and “associative links” with the codes of other information blocks would be prescribed for it. In this way, a system of interconnected contextual links within the information repository was built.
Using this tool, the user can, as Bush wrote, “insert his own commentary, either by linking it to the main path or by attaching it as a side path to a particular item. In this way, he builds his own route through the maze of available materials.” Another function of “Memex,” as conceived by the inventor, is the ability to share information: “the user can also create a copy of an interesting piece of information (containing links and personal annotations), and […] pass it on to a colleague for insertion into his own Memex.” Bush envisioned the ability to link, comment on, and share one's own scientific ideas and research results as a game changer in the 20th century scientific world. In his essay “As We May Think,” Vannevar Bush wrote:
Entirely new forms of encyclopedia will appear, with a network of associative traces running through them, ready to be added to the Memex. The lawyer will have at his disposal the opinions of his colleagues and the decisions of the courts related to his case; the patent attorney will have access to millions of issued patents and will be able to study them on behalf of his client. The doctor, puzzled by the condition of a patient, will follow the trail established in the study of an earlier similar case and will quickly review similar case histories. The historian, having at his disposal an extensive chronological description of the development of a civilization or a people, will be able to dwell only on the most important events in its history and will be able at any time to follow modern routes that lead him through the entire civilization in a particular era. A new profession of pioneers will appear – those who find pleasure in laying out useful routes in the vast mass of general records.
By and large, Bush described the modern Internet. Certainly, the invention was innovative for its time, but due to its extreme structural complexity, it remained an unrealized project – in the preface to As We May Think, Vannevar wrote directly that the description of his invention was purely hypothetical. Nevertheless, he noted that “to create Memex, unknown means may be used that may appear any day and greatly change the course of technological progress.”
The Legacy of Memex
In 1961, another legendary computer pioneer,
read Bush's article. It inspired him so much that he decided to improve the Memex microfilm viewing table. While working on this project, Engelbart gradually arrived at the innovative concept of a personal computer connected to an electronic display and a mouse-type input device.
In 1959, Vannevar Bush published an article describing an improved “Memex II.” This publication already hinted at network communications — Bush assumed that users of the device would be able to exchange information by ordering microfilms by mail from a special centralized library, or transmitting data via fax. In addition, the author noted the need to create several “master Memex” containing a large archival set of documents, links, and index tables — a kind of prototype of a server.
In 1967, Bush published a retrospective article entitled “Memex Revisited,” in which he described the then-modern technologies that made the device possible. He particularly noted transistors, cathode-ray tube displays, and he considered magnetic and video tapes rather than microfilms as storage media. In addition to handwritten notes, audio and video recordings could be added to the storage media. However, the “updated Memex” in Bush's notes remains an analog device, not a digital one. Vannevar explains this by the lack of need to pursue the speed that computer developers strive for: “the key feature of Memex is not rapid access, but selective access to information.”
In the 90s, American entrepreneur Charles Smith founded the company Memex, which he named after Vannevar Bush's invention. This company, which bought a license from Autodesk for the Xanadu hypertext system developed by Ted Nelson, did not last long. And already in the 21st century, enthusiasts tried to build a model of Vannevar Bush's Memex using modern technology – for scientific and entertainment purposes.
Of course, Memex looks like an anachronism today, but the ideas embedded in this machine inspired many engineers and researchers to develop inventions that have become part of the modern Internet and computer technology.
The article is supported by the team Serverspace.
Serverspace — a cloud services provider that rents out virtual servers with Linux and Windows OS in 8 data centers: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Turkey, the USA, Canada and Brazil. To build an IT infrastructure, the provider also offers: creating networks, gateways, backups, CDN services, DNS, S3 object storage.
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