Escalante
Memex, Vannevar Bush (image source).
Vannevar Bush learned a lot from how knowledge is organised and shared from his work organising the scientific war effort, and in July 1945 published a popular article in the Atlantic Monthly called As We May Think.
It’s likely you’ve read it, or heard of it, but for those who haven’t, he suggests a device called the Memex. It’s a personal device based on microfiche and cameras that lets you organise your whole library of books, papers and photographs, and make connections between them. Then you can then share these connections, or trails as he calls them, with other people.
Sounds familiar!
Importantly, two specific people read this article. One is Ted Nelson, who invents hypertext.