1943: ENIAC Computer
Computers were invented as a tool to enhance human thought and memory, and first designed as counting and calculation machines for scientist and engineers users. ENIAC ( Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) is thought to be the first electronic vacuum tube computer that represents the birth of the computer age.
Vannevar Bush seen as a pioneer in the concept of the desktop computer, the World Wide Web, hypertext, and was the prophet of the computer age. He inspired scientists to create “a vast storage of human knowledge accessible and useful.” In the 1930s he named this information tool as
Memex, “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility to aid memory… It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance … On the top is slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk… Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them… infostructure”
Vannevar Bush; As We May Think; Atlantic Monthly; July 1945
There are no comments yet.
