In July 1945, Vannevar Bush came up with the Memex, a fictional proto-computer to augment your memory, manage your research and contribute to knowledg

(Interconnected) The Memex, the Manhattan Project, and the month of July 1945

submited by
Style Pass
2021-05-15 12:38:27

In July 1945, Vannevar Bush came up with the Memex, a fictional proto-computer to augment your memory, manage your research and contribute to knowledge of the world. His article was published in The Atlantic and you can read it online – although this scanned version also has the ads and the illustrations, so check it out.

Anyway, for a made-up bit of furniture (it’s a desk with a microfilm library inside), it has been enormously influential. Doug Engelbart, whose team kicked off the personal computer vision in 1968: he read Bush’s article in a Red Cross hut in the Phillipines in 1945/46, and it kickstarted his vision. Here’s the hut (or at least one nearby).

Tim Berners-Lee, when he wrote the proposal for what became the web, in 1989: he cites Ted Nelson’s vision of hypertext; Nelson credits Bush as his main influence.

Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) headed up the US government’s military R&D during the Second World War, coordinating thousands of scientists (just one of his projects was the S-1 Section, which showed the feasibility of the atomic bomb, and he initiated the Manhattan Project, the massive project that created the bomb itself).

Leave a Comment