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| The Fathers of Hypertext |
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| There are undoubtedly many people who have contributed, sometimes without realising it, to the development of
hypertext and associated systems. But there are certain names which no story about hypertext should be without. |
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| If you were given a description of Vannevar Bush's Memex, you would probably think it was a contemporary description
of the World Wide Web or an intranet. It is quite astonishing to think that he had these ideas some
seventy years ago! His article, "As We May Think", published in 1945 (although he had the ideas behind it in the 1930s) was inspirational to many others in this field,
including Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart who both publicly acknowledged his influence on their own work.
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| They themselves are key contributors to the history of hypertext, Nelson is responsible for coining the phrase "Hypertext"
and he has worked on the Xanadu project for many years, and much of what he set out to achieve has probably already manifested itself
on the World Wide Web. |
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| Engelbart, not a name that is instantly known like for example, Bill Gates. But the success of Microsoft and others owes an awful lot to the
achievements of Douglas Engelbart and his colleagues. Did you know for example that he invented the mouse? or the concept of email, on line help systems and even windows environments.
He eventually patented the mouse in 1970. Today, everyone knows what a mouse is, they are synonimous with personal computers. |
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| You have Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web - the WWW has forced hypertext into a new era. What was largely
text only documents on the internet for scholars and professors, has given way to fully interactive experiences of the visual and audible, information can now be disseminated across
the planet in seconds. The problem perhaps now, is not how to get the knowledge, but how to apply it. |
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