5 ms·

The Memex, the Manhatten Project, and the Month of July 1945

• cxr 5y ago
  > 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. This is possibly overstated. In Engelbart's personal correspondence with Bush, he explains that he read the article in Life Magazine, and it "probably influenced" him, but that despite reading it "avidly" at the time, he basically forgot about it—which means he spent the next 13 years working on his personal vision without any conscious awareness of Bush's article—until he rediscovered the article in the very late 50s (writing that, "I wouldn't be surprised at all if the reading of this article sixteen and a half years ago hadn't had a real influence upon the course of my thoughts and actions"). For comparison, even after rediscovering it Engelbart would have already been at SRI for a year or two at the time, and of course all his years trying to pursue that vision (largely in vain) prior to receiving the SRI offer to host his research. It's not nothing, but it's also not the picture of a young Engelbart finding the article, being instantly converted, and then setting out to make it his life's mission, which is the way that a lot of the popular tellings would lead many people to believe.
• 8bitsrule 5y ago
  'Memex'-like ideas had been kicking around for a long time (Otlet's 'Mundaneum' (actually realized but a victim of ignorance), H.G. Wells' "World Brain"). Bush tried another spin. I don't recall seeing a detailed breakdown of how the Memex worked (microfilm). But yes, Engelbart and his team decidedly were the first to demonstrate a fully-working, well-integrated concept -on networked hardware-. Once again, as Ted Nelson also learned, the world just wasn't ready.