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| The Xanadu Project |
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| Xanadu is the name Ted Nelson gave to his concept of a hypertext system. He named it after Coleridge's
"Kubla Khan", Nelson was at the time working for a publisher. He describes Xanadu at length in his
publication Literary Machines, where he calls it a "Magic place of literary memory". |
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| Nelson's vision was first announced in the 1974 publication Dream Machines, as being ready and released by 1976.
In the 1987 edition of another of his publications, Literary Machines, the release date was now cited as being 1988. |
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| The Xanadu project was given a large boost of probably both cash and morale with the company that made it's fortune with the AutoCAD
software, Autodesk buying the Xanadu Operating Company. Later that year, some of the prototype code was released to the public, and earlier
in an article published in January 1988, Nelson had stated that Xanadu would be fully completed by 1991. It wasn't, and Autodesk has since
relinquished their interest in the project. |
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| Whilst the Xanadu project has failed to materialise itself in a tangible form from Nelson, it's concepts are undoubtedly present in some of
todays hypertext systems, indeed, the World Wide Web is full of the implementations of Nelson's ideas. |
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| To find out more about Ted Nelson and his Xanadu Project, you could have a browse at this web site, which contains details of Project Xanadu, and links to Ted's homepage. |
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