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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Hi Evan, Marc,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">For backstories of the Memex, I’m a big fan of Colin Burke’s “Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex.”
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">My,
<i><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/code">Code: From Information Theory to French Theory</a></i>, examines the roots of the Memex and its predecessor, the Rapid Selector, in eugenics and biopolitics. If anyone wants a review copy of the book (it starts shipping
next month, I think), please feel free to request one <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/Information-For/Booksellers-Media-Review-Copies/Request-Review-Copies">
here</a>, or write me directly. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">It’s highly significant that around 1939 when Bush left MIT for the Carnegie Institution—at the time he was working on varied information sorting devices—he quickly sought to reform
the infamous Eugenics <i><u>Records</u></i> Office with the resources of the Carnegie. The ERO, like the interwar and wartime data devices Bush was working on, was based on the idea of sorting and collecting “records.” Hence, Bush’s suggestion to his former
student, Claude E. Shannon, to write his PhD at the ERO—part of Bush’s larger project throughout the 1930s and 1940s to computationally and logically order science, in its varied data problems, in initiatives running from bioengineering to the Memex.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Below, two brief excerpts from
<i>Code: From Information Theory to French Theor</i>y:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">“Bush and his colleagues envisioned the Rapid Selector as a general-purpose information processor suited to the analysis of genetic, business,
library, and statistical data. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation had provided lavish support for the development of microphotography, a forerunner of microfiche, for documentation in the humanities. As such, the foundation stood out
as an excellent candidate to support Bush’s work with the selector. Warren Weaver recorded in his notes from a 1937 meeting, “Sometime ago federal authorities asked him [Bush] to consider the problem of devising mechanical aids for rapidly locating fingerprints.
. . . B[ush] worked out a system which would permit the examination of approximately 1,000 per second.” Considering the problem of rapidly sorting fingerprints, Weaver wrote, “it then occurred to him [Bush] that this scheme was possible for development into
a new technique for making available the stored literature of the past.” In this manner biological and bibliographical data might be processed by the same techniques of automation exploited by mechanical computers….” (Geoghegan,
<i>Code</i>, p. 32)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">“Bush left MIT to assume the presidency of the Carnegie Institution, another of the great robber baron philanthropies and a sponsor of the Eugenics
Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor. By the late 1930s the deep and abiding biological racism propounded by the ERO had fallen out of fashion, and Bush sought to reset it on rigorous scientific foundations. Bush seized upon Shannon’s theory of relay
switching as a model of how a haphazard, unscientific method could be rendered orderly and logical with applied mathematics. Bush later explained, “It occurred to me that, just as [Shannon’s] special algebra had worked well in his hands on the theory of [binary]
relays, another special algebra might conceivably handle some of the aspects of Mendelian heredity.” Writing to ERO psychologist Barbara Stoddard Burks, who had mined the ERO’s sprawling records for evidence of a genetic basis for intelligence, Bush explained
that he had suggested to Shannon that he “try his queer algebra” in the analysis of genetic problems. This offered a chance for Bush, who had intermittently championed bioengineering over the past decade at MIT, to realize his efforts to bring logical and
computational analysis to bear on an infamously complex problem deemed of pressing social importance.” (Geoghegan,
<i>Code</i>, p. 48)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Best wishes, Bernard
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><span style="font-size:14.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:14.0pt;color:black">Members <members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Marc Weber via Members <members@lists.sigcis.org><br>
<b>Date: </b>Wednesday, 16 November 2022 at 08:16<br>
<b>To: </b>Koblentz, Evan <evank@njit.edu><br>
<b>Cc: </b>members@SIGCIS.org <members@sigcis.org><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [SIGCIS-Members] What inspired Bush's Memex?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">Bush was aware of a lot of prior work on related ideas in Europe for information technology, including that of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Otlet">Paul Otlet</a> and his Mundaneum, the World
Brain <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brain">article and later book</a> by H.G. Wells, not to mention the actual microfilm retrieval mechanism built into a desk by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Goldberg">Emanuel Goldberg</a> at
Zeiss-Ikon in the early 1930s (Bush couldn’t patent certain aspects of the Memex because of Goldberg’s prior work). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">Bush’s really important twist on prior work was to use two microfilm readers in parallel, thus allowing hypertext links between them and the sharing of “trails” made up of such links between users. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">The start of the <a href="https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/the-web/20/370">Web gallery</a> in our <a href="https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/topics#exhibition">Revolution</a> exhibition
very briefly talks about the work above except for Goldberg.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">For books Professor Michael Buckland of UC Berkeley wrote <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Emanuel-Goldberg-His-Knowledge-Machine/dp/0313313326/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1XDL8JJQMPQV7&keywords=michael+buckland&qid=1668573113&sprefix=michael+buckland,aps,167&sr=8-3"><i>Emanuel
Goldberg and his Knowledge Machine</i></a> about the Memex’s precursor, as well as numerous articles. Paul Kahn of Brown University wrote <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Memex-Hypertext-Vannevar-Minds-Machine/dp/0125232705/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LG514Y333H3C&keywords=vannevar+bush+paul+kahn&qid=1668572978&sprefix=vannevar+bush+paul+kahn,aps,133&sr=8-1"><i>From
Memex to Hypertext</i></a>, G. Pascal Zachary wrote an excellent <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Endless-Frontier-Vannevar-Engineer-American-ebook/dp/B077721CMV/ref=sr_1_2?crid=GNW04BN9A1L4&keywords=vannevar+bush&qid=1668572875&sprefix=vannevar+bush,aps,372&sr=8-2">biography
of Bush</a> and Bush wrote an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Action-Vannevar-Bush-ebook/dp/B0B15CCH7N/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GNW04BN9A1L4&keywords=vannevar+bush&qid=1668572946&sprefix=vannevar+bush,aps,372&sr=8-1">autobiography</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">Best, Marc<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">p.s. here’s a quote from Wikipedia on Goldberg’s microfilm retrieval machine and the Memex:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">“...At the same Congress Goldberg introduced his "Statistical Machine," a document search engine that used <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric" title="Photoelectric">photoelectric</a> cells
and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition" title="Pattern recognition">pattern recognition</a> to search the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata" title="Metadata">metadata</a> on rolls of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfilm" title="Microfilm">microfilmed</a> documents
(US patent 1,838,389, 29 December 1931). This technology was used in a variant form in 1938 by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush">Vannevar Bush</a> in his "microfilm rapid selector," his "comparator" (for cryptanalysis), and was the technological
basis for the imaginary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex" title="Memex">Memex</a> in Bush's influential 1945 essay "As we may think.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">On Nov 15, 2022, at 18:56, Koblentz, Evan via Members <<a href="mailto:members@lists.sigcis.org">members@lists.sigcis.org</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">Does anyone have documentation, or good theories, about how/where Vannevar Bush was inspired to develop his ideas for the speculative Memex? I know that he was privy to the latest computer developments, but
how did he make the jump from plugboards and punch cards to a virtual encyclopedia and hypertext?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">_______________________________________________<br>
This email is relayed from members at <a href="http://sigcis.org/">sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at
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<a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org">http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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