history of
hypertext & hypermedia
geschiedenis van de informatica - 30 maart 2009
erik duval
K.U.Leuven
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~erikd
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Monday 30 March 2009

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Monday 30 March 2009

http://www.slideshare.net/erik.duval
Monday 30 March 2009
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Timing?
input from my students...
• Teletext: 1970?
• telefoonbanking: 1990?
• encyclopedie: Larousse? 18de eeuw?
• encarta: 1995
• telegraaf: 1850?
Monday 30 March 2009

• 1907: Paul Otlet
• 1945:Vannevar Bush, memex
• 1967: Andy van Dam, Hypertext Editing System
• 1968: Doug Englebart, NLS
• 1975: Carnegie-Mellon, ZOG/KMS
• 1985: Brown, Intermedia
• 1986: Owl, Guide
• 1987: Apple, Hypercard
• 1987: Hypertext 87
• 1991: CERN, WWW 5
Monday 30 March 2009

Paul Otlet
• Belgian, 1868-1944
• lawyer, bibliographer, internationalist
• background
• “proliferation and disorderly state of
the literature in the social sciences”
• “there is too much to read”
• ‘monographic principle’: text chunks on cards
• facts, interpretation of facts, statistics, sources
• systematic reorganization of knowledge
Monday 30 March 2009

Paul Otlet
• Universal Bibliographic
Repertory
• 1912: >250.000 images
• 1934: >15 million cards
• searches until early 1970s!
• Universal Decimal Classification (based on DDC)
• foresaw technological development:
• screens, loudspeakers, distant access ... even VR
• network of libraries, archives, museums ... Internet
• Mundaneum Mons: http://www.mundaneum.be
Monday 30 March 2009

Paul Otlet
• outmoded positivist paradigm
• true hypertext does not
destroy original document
• more:
• W. Boyd Rayward. Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and
Hypertext. Journal of the American Society for Information Science,
45(4):235-250, 1994, pp. 235-250.
• http://nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html
• http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~buckland/otlet.html
Monday 30 March 2009

Vannevar Bush, Memex
• 1890-1974
• science advisor to Roosevelt
• explosion of scientific information
• mechanical solution: memory extender
• “device in which an individual stores all his books, record and
communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be
consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility”
• medium: microfilm, scanner, handwriting
• several parallel screens (cfr. windows)
• associative indexing
Monday 30 March 2009

Vannevar Bush, Memex
Monday 30 March 2009

Vannevar Bush, Memex
• trails: set of links that would combine information relevant
to a perspective or a topic
• professional trail blazers
• trails can be published
• popular exposure (Time, Life), never got built
• Vannevar Bush. As we may think. Athlantic Monthly, 1945.
• http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm
Monday 30 March 2009

Ted Nelson, Xanadu
• coined ‘hypertext’ (1965)
• design for a new literature
• all the world’s literature
• address any substring of any
doc from any doc
• neverbeen linked to
delete text because may
have
• most recent version always
retrievable
Monday 30 March 2009

Ted Nelson, Xanadu
• royalties to original author
based on bytes seen by
reader
• reader can always request
full version of original text
(and thus context)
• vision never implemented
Monday 30 March 2009

Ted Nelson, Xanadu
Monday 30 March 2009

Ted Nelson, Xanadu
• more:
• Theordor Holm Nelson. Litterary
Machines 93.1. Mindful Press.
• http://ted.hyperland.com/
• http://www.xanadu.net/
Monday 30 March 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9kAW8qeays
Monday 30 March 2009

D. Engelbart, Augment
• Stanford Research Institute
• invented interactive
computing (mouse,
windows, groupware, ...)
• team went to Xerox PARC
• now: bootstrap institute
• http://www.bootstrap.org/
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Monday 30 March 2009

D. Engelbart, Augment
• demo at 1968 Fall
Joint Computer
Conference
• video, microwave
transmission, ...
• http://
sloan.stanford.edu/
mousesite/
1968Demo.html
• http://
www.youtube.com
/watch?
v=X4kp9Ciy1nE
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Monday 30 March 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4kp9Ciy1nE
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Monday 30 March 2009

http://cfdj.sys-con.com/read/536976.htm
Monday 30 March 2009

http://cfdj.sys-con.com/read/536976.htm
Monday 30 March 2009

http://cfdj.sys-con.com/read/536976.htm
Monday 30 March 2009

http://cfdj.sys-con.com/read/536976.htm
Monday 30 March 2009

Fast forward to …
now :) !
Text
Text
http://flash.kmi.open.ac.uk:8080/fm/fmm.php?code=c785a5-890&room=fm890
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Monday 30 March 2009

Fast forward to …
now :) !
Text
Text
http://hyperscope.org/
http://flash.kmi.open.ac.uk:8080/fm/fmm.php?code=c785a5-890&room=fm890
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Monday 30 March 2009

Fast forward to …
now :) !
Text
Text
http://hyperscope.org/
http://flash.kmi.open.ac.uk:8080/fm/fmm.php?code=c785a5-890&room=fm890
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3914718330476864051&q=doug+engelbart
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Monday 30 March 2009

http://www.designinginteractions.com/
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http://programforthefuture.org/
Monday 30 March 2009

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http://programforthefuture.org/
Monday 30 March 2009

1978: Aspen Movie Map
http://www.naimark.net/projects/aspen.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf6LkqgXPMU
Monday 30 March 2009

1985: intermedia
• Brown, Andy Van
Dam
• linking protocol for
apps to link to and
from documents
• separate webs with
links for each user
• designed for
educational use
http://www.useit.com/papers/hypertext-history/
Monday 30 March 2009

• CERN: loose projects, international,
• complex equipment
• 1989: proposal, T.Berners-Lee&R. Cailliau
• 1990: ECHT, info.cern.ch
• 1991:on alt.hypertext, comp.infosystems.www, telnetserver
release browser for Next, line mode browser,
code to line-
mode browser, Hypertext91: rejected, only connected demo
• 1993: Jan: 50 public, info.cern.ch 10 Khits/day, Oct: Lynx,servers
servers, Feb: Mosaic (NCSA), March: April:
CERN code 200
• 1994: March: 1st conference
• Oct: 2nd conference, Dec: 1st w3c meeting
Monday 30 March 2009

Monday 30 March 2009

Why successful?
Monday 30 March 2009

Why successful?
• open systems approach
• standardized specifications for
interoperability
• backwards compatible with legacy data
(can access gopher, ftp, news, wais, ...)
• designed to be decentralized:
• no central link database (hence
consistency less assured)
• no ‘compilation’ into specific format
Monday 30 March 2009

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/484
Monday 30 March 2009

Questions?
http://erikduval.wordpress.com/
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~erikd
Thanks!
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Monday 30 March 2009