From Memex To Hypertext (Hardcover)

~ James M. Nyce (Author), Paul Kahn (Author) "ONE DAY IN 1942, THE ROCKEFELLER DIFFERENTIAL ANALYZER was dedicated to winning the war..." (more)
Key Phrases: rapid selector, science pauses, dry photography, New York, Vannevar Bush, Atlantic Monthly (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Vannevar Bush, the engineer who designed the world's most powerful analog computer, predicted the development of a new kind of computing machine he called Memex. For many computer and information scientists, Bush's Memex has been the prototype for a machine to help people think. This book contains Bush's essays, and original essays by academic and commerical researchers relating the state of art in personal computing, hypertext and information retrieval software to bush's ideas and Memex.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 367 pages
• Publisher: Academic Press; 1 edition (December 31, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0125232705
• ISBN-13: 978-0125232708
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #812,977 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As we may point and click, March 17, 1997

By A Customer

Vannevar Bush was Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. In the July 1945 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, he published a popular science article entitled "As We May Think." Bush discusses a device called a "memex", a sort of workstation with vast optical storage and mechanical information retrieval using associative indexing and "trails". The article is of interest today not only because he happened to get pretty close to how the future finally turned out, but also for the fresh perspective from a time before interactivity itself had been invented. It is also curious to see what he got wrong. Unlike our present day Visionaries, he completely failed to anticipate the introduction of Microsoft Windows on the PC.