[ih] lots of links, Memories of Flag Day?

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

John Levine writes on 18 Aug 2023 17:44:56 -0400:

>> Engelbart showed them in the famous 1968 demo, Ted Nelson showed me
>> hyperlinks in the 1970s, and told me he got the idea from an article
>> Vannevar Bush wrote in the 1940s.

Here is some background that may be interest to some Internet History
list readers.

Bush's article is widely cited:

	As We May Think [July 1945]
	https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/

Vannevar Bush was enormously influential, and was behind the founding
of the US National Science Foundation.  Here is a link to an obituary:

	Dr. Vannevar Bush Is Dead at 84
	https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/30/archives/dr-vannevar-bush-is-dead-at-84-dr-vannevar-bush-who-marshaled.html

and to an encyclopedia article:

	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush

His invention of the differential analyzer, an electromechanical
device for solving certain kinds of differential equations, in the
early 1930s is described here:

	The differential analyzer. A new machine for solving differential equations
	Journal of The Franklin Institute 212(4) 447--488 (July/December) 1931
	https://doi.org/10.1016/S0016-0032(31)90616-9
		
and here

	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_analyser

Bush's work at MIT in Cambridge, MA, USA inspired others to be built,
including ones by Douglas Hartree in Manchester, UK (his first working
model was built with Meccano parts borrowed from his children (Meccano
is a toy construction set similar to the US Erector sets), then in
Cambridge, UK by Maurice Wilkes, in Belfast, Northern Ireland by
H. S. W. Massey and others, and at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in
Farnborough, UK (50k southwest of London).  Others were built in the
US, Canada, Norway, and Japan.

The biggest may have been the one in Norway:

	Svein Rosseland and the Oslo analyzer
	IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 18(4) 16--26 (October/December) 1996
	https://doi.org/10.1109/85.539912

By the early 1950s, the far more general digital computers made such
machines obsolete, but they played important roles in 1930s scientific
research, and in World War II for artillery ballistics work.

Finally, there is a recent historical article on his influence:

	The Fall of Vannevar Bush: The Forgotten War for Control of
	Science Policy in Postwar America
	Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2021) 51 (4): 507–541.
	https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2021.51.4.507

I'm reasonably current on this subject because of this recent addition
to the BibNet Project:

	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/bibnet/authors/h/hartree-douglas-r.bib
	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/bibnet/authors/h/hartree-douglas-r.html

They look similar on the screen, but the .html form has live hyperlinks.

In 1952, Hartree wrote the first English language book with the title
"Numerical Analysis".  The docstring in the bibliography preamble
tells much more about him.  He inspired Wilkes, who built the EDSAC 1
and 2 at Cambridge UK.  The first of those was in turn inspired by the
ENIAC at Princeton University.  Entry Wilkes:1985:MCP in the
bibliography is for Wilkes' memoirs, and the Hartree bibliography
has more entries for Wilkes' works.


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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                                                          -
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