[ih] origins of the term "hyperlink"

[Marc Weber]

Ted Nelson’s 1965 paper “A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate” mentions hypertext and hyperfiles, and uses the word link in its modern sense. I did not check carefully whether he used the actual composite term “hyperlink.” The New Media Reader by Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort collects a lot of key early essays related to hypertext and multimedia including this one. 

Note that Andy van Dam did not create HES (Hypertext Editing System) in the late 1960s without being aware of Ted Nelson’s work, as somebody wrote earlier in this thread. In fact Andy and Ted developed the program together before going their separate ways; the paper they co-published is available online and is also in The New Media Reader. We interviewed a number of the folks involved in hypertext at Brown; Norm Meyrowitz and Andy van Dam put on a wonderful all-day seminar last spring on “A Half Century of Hypertext at Brown <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKw5sEVmGgM>." It is true that Andy was not aware of the work of Doug Engelbart until later.

Jake Feinler gave me a scan of “As We May Think” annotated by Doug, likely the same scan people are referring to. We may have the paper original in the NIC collection at the Computer History Museum. 

BTW around the year 2000, British Telecom tried unsuccessfully to make a legal claim they had invented the hyperlink. 

Best, Marc

Marc Weber <http://www.computerhistory.org/staff/Marc,Weber/>  |   marc at webhistory.org  |   +1 415 282 6868 
Internet History Program Curatorial Director, Computer History Museum            
1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory <http://computerhistory.org/nethistory>
Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org 

> On Apr 13, 2020, at 13:56, Edward Summers via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Apr 12, 2020, at 2:04 PM, Edward Summers via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> The resolution unfortunately isn't the best. But it is good enough to see Engelbart's annotations. I tried to find one mentioning "link" when trails were being discussed. The best candidate I could find was in the second paragraph on the right side of p. 107. But he uses the "list" instead of "link". If Jeff or anyone can make a higher resolution copy of it available it be amazing to see it!
> 
> Just in case anyone else was curious: the "LINKS" mention is indeed barely legible on p. 107 of Engelbart's copy of As We May Think, but not in the margin (see attached screenshot). Many thanks for the off-list help. I'd still love to see a higher resolution scan if anyone has access to one. What a historical treasure!
> 
> //Ed
> 
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