[SIGCIS-Members] Bush's rapid selector--photo documentation?

[Bernard Geoghegan]

Hi Brian, colleagues,

 

Thanks for the tip, I’ll look it up. A couple other members reminded me off-list of Colin Burke and his book “Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex,” which has some visual documentation, and some possible archives to follow up on. (And Colin just pointed me towards another source--if I could somehow reach archives during the pandemic). 

 

Just by way of trivial, per the other device you mention, the Memex, the relationship between the two is interesting. Burke writes “The Selector was the closest Bush ever came to building a Memex, but it has attracted much less attention than his proposed association machine.” Of the protoype finally built, he wrote “The machine that emerged in 1940 was certainly not the desk size and affordable apparatus that Bush envisioned in the early 1930s. Its heart was a typical seven foot high relay rack which housed the film drives, scanner, and reproduction apparatus. Electronics took another cabinet. The modified electric typewriter for preparing the abstracts, which used long rolls of paper advanced by a special stepping mechanism, was itself the size of a desk.” 

 

Thanks, all, for the help!  Stay well,

 

b

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- 

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan

Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Digital Media

Chair of the UG Assessment Board, Digital Culture

www.bernardg.com

 

Department of Digital Humanities

King's College London 

The Strand Building

Room S3.08

WC2R 2LS

 

Office: +44 (0)20 7848 4750

 

From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Brian Berg <brianberg at gmail.com>
Date: Monday, 21 September 2020 at 18:11
To: SIGCIS Listserver <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Bush's rapid selector--photo documentation?

 

Dear Bernard,

 

The Endless Frontier book recently discussed on the list (in the lengthy biographies thread, and which I just received from a used book outlet) notes an article that Bush published in Technology Review (not dated, but written apparently in the early 1930s "from the vantage point of the future" looking back "on the crude technologies of the 1930s") in which he "outlined a device, housed n a desk drawer, that would store and reproduce on a screen thousands of books."

 

Clearly it was all a "pipe dream" at that time - hence, there would be no "incarnation at MIT in the 1930s" of this device, which is discussed in the above cited section of the book, as well as in 2 other sections from later in time.

 

Brian Berg

 

On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 6:34 AM Bernard Geoghegan <bernardgeoghegan2010 at u.northwestern.edu> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

 

I hope you are all well in these challenging times. 

 

I’m writing with a brief research question: Does anyone know of where I might find visual documentation of Vannevar Bush’s 1930s “rapid selector,” which I don’t think got much beyond prototype stage? A 1949 article by John C. Green, “The Rapid Selector—An Automatic Library,” depicts a version improved and updated by others (that article states “After the war a number of interested persons again took up the problem of the Rapid Selector. Among them were Ralph Shaw, Librarian of the Department of Agriculture, and a group of persons who had originally worked with Dr. Bush, and were now independently organized as Engineering Research Associates, with headquarters in St. Paul). However, I’m wondering if anyone has come across photos, diagrams, etc., from its incarnation at MIT in the 1930s. 

 

Thanks for any feedback, stay safe.

 

Bernard 

 

 

 

-- 

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan

Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Digital Media

Chair of the UG Assessment Board, Digital Culture

www.bernardg.com

 

Department of Digital Humanities

King's College London 

The Strand Building

Room S3.08

WC2R 2LS

 

Office: +44 (0)20 7848 4750Dear Colleagues,

 

I hope you are all well in these challenging times. 

 

I’m writing with a brief research question: Does anyone know of any visual documentation of Vannevar Bush’s 1930s “rapid selector,” which I don’t think ever got much beyond prototype stage? A 1949 article by John C. Green, “The Rapid Selector—An Automatic Library,” depicts an apparently improved and updated version. However, I’m wondering if anyone has come across photos, diagrams, etc., from its incarnation at MIT in the 1930s. 

 

Thanks for any feedback, stay well.

 

 

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