Vannevar Bush's 1945 article envisioned a new machine called Memex that would allow users to store, link, and retrieve documents. Memex used microfilm to store books, records, and communications, and screens to view and link documents. It aimed to augment human associative thinking by allowing users to build trails through linked documents. This vision anticipated key aspects of modern hypertext and the World Wide Web by proposing a way to represent knowledge through linked documents.