Vannevar Bush

1. Vannevar Bush 1890 - 1974 “Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission.”

2. The Life of an Engineer’s Engineer Vannevar Bush was born in Everett, Ma, on March 11, 1890. Graduating from Tufts in 1913 with a B.S. and M.S. degree, he also earned a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT and Harvard in 1916. After his education, he became assistant professor of electrical engineering at Tufts and married Phoebe Davis who bore him two children as they lived near Boston, Ma. Bush was successful in developing a submarine magnetic detector for the Navy antisubmarine laboratory during World War I. After the war he taught electrical power transmission at MIT and consulted for the American Research and Development Corporation (AMRAD). Along with Charles G. Smith, he invented a gaseous rectifier tube, the S tube. With Laurence K. Marshall, he started the Raytheon Corporation making vacuum tubes and thermostats. Bush then went on to develop a mechanical differential analyzer in 1931 in order to improve the solutions of complex mathematical equations. In 1932 he was appointed the dean of engineering and vice-president of MIT. At this point his involvement in organizations grew and he found himself by 1934 to be a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as serving on the Science Advisory Board, chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Bush chairman of the new National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) on June 27, 1940 that promoted government sponsorship of private research.

3. “To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit.. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish the framework on which the spirits may rise.” • In the July 1945 issue of Atlantic Monthly he published his famous essay “As We May Think” which described a theoretical machine called Memex that would use hypertext to organize and retrieve information. This would become one of his greatest achievements and would later be known as Hypertext. After the war, he helped establish the Atomic Energy Commission in 1946 and the National Science Foundation in 1950. He then resided in private employment with the Carnegie Institution during the Cold War or “age of paranoia which he opposed. He was also the director of AT&T until 1962, and was chairman of the board at Merck from 1957 until 1962. He died from pneumonia after suffering a stroke in 1974.

4. “As We May Think” In his essay “As We May Think”, Vannevar Bush in 1945 reminded everyone that science and technology can and should be pursued primarily for peace and things that are beneficial, not just for warfare. Bush proposed and outlined what might be seen as a kind of precursor to hypertext. This is what would become the Internet. Overall, his main goal was the promotion of a system that would make the vast store of human knowledge accessible and useful. • How could information be gathered, stored and accessed? MEMEX "He [mankind] has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory."

5. MakingInternetHistory Bush envisioned a device for personal use that acted like a mechanized private file and library. This was his most direct influence on the development of the Internet. The system he described he first named “Memex” which would be the very first automated information management system. Bush had thought up a scientific enlightening application of electronics that had never been considered. Later generations of scientists and engineers who built the internet were inspired by his theory; some who believed in it went on to eventually build it and support its principles.

6. Memex - Hypertext A future device for individual use would allow the storage of ones books, records, and communications. This storage would be mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. “It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.” This device would be operated at a desk where one would have translucent screens that would act as the display what would be read. There is also a keyboard and a set of buttons and levers to control the device. According to Bush, only a small portion of Memex would be devoted to storage where most of it would be composed of the machine. However, there would be enough of room within the storage area for one to fill it with plenty of data.

7. The contents of Memex are purchased on microfilm and then inserted. He also explained that there would be transparent platen and with the action of a lever photographed on the next section of the Memex film. Consultation is an important aspect of the device. Using the keyboard one would be able to find a book for example already stored by typing in a code. The title of the book would appear and with the deflection of a lever to the right he could turn the pages as fast as he’d like. A special button would also allow him to skip right to the index. Because there would be more than one projection positions he would be able call up several items and also use write notes or comments using the direct entry from before.

8. Your New Desk

9. The essential feature of the Memex device is the ability to immediately select any item after another. Bush envisioned navigating through a great store of data and described a path which would connect information of interest and the process by which links are formed between nodes in today’s hypertext. “When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined.” “Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book.”

10. The Memex system Bush described is remarkably similar to today’s Hypertext. In the 1960’s Ted Nelson came up with the name “Hypertext” which is a machine-readable text that is not sequential but is organized so that related items of information are connected; "Let me introduce the word hypertext to mean a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper.” Ted Nelson acknowledged his debt to Vannevar and said, “Bush was right.” Bush passed away before the Internet became popular. He is held as the most important visionary to the Internets birth and development. By Adam Heal