Hyper Text History

Perhaps you are looking for BackButtonForBrowsingHyperText?

You would think that Hypertext would have fairly recent origin, like say the 60s or 70s. But think again. Hypertext is thought by some to have originated in 1945.

From VannevarBush's 1945 essay "AsWeMayThink":

: Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

Vannevar Bush introduces a concept for handling the rapidly developing information developed during the 2nd World War in the period following it. His description of the "memex" is amazingly similar to a modern microcomputer and the process he describes for navigation is the forerunner of the modern "browser" (see MemexVision).

See Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond ISBN 0-12-518408-5 (paperback).

See also: Nyce, J. and Kahn, P., From Memex To Hypertext, Academic Press, 1991, ISBN 0125232705

1934 PaulOtlet publishes "Traité de documentation", proposing, among other innovations, annotated links between documents http://boxesandarrows.com/forgotten-forefather-paul-otlet/ 1945 Vannevar Bush proposes Memex (see AsWeMayThink)

1965 Ted Nelson introduces Xanadu and the word "hypertext"(reference?) 1966 1967 The Hypertext Editing System and FRESS, Brown University, Andy van Dam 1968 Doug Engelbart demo of NLS system at FJCC 1969 Edward Packard writes "Sugarcane Island" the first known "Choose Your Own Adventure" Book. http://www.netaxs.com/~katz/game/advyou.htm 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 ZOG (now KMS): CMU 1976 1977 1978 1979 "Choose Your Own Adventure" Books become popular with children in US. 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 Filevision Macintosh application from Telos 1984 Michael Lebowitz "Creating Characters in a Story-Telling Universe" Creation of a story telling program ColumbiaUniversity? http://mh.cla.umn.edu//ebibss2.html 1985 Symbolics Document Examiner, Janet Walker 1985 Intermedia, Brown University, Norman Meyrowitz 1985 NoteCards, Xerox 1986 OWL introduces Guide, first widely available hypertext 1986 Stephen T. Kerr. "Instructional Text: The Transition from Page to Screen." VisibleLanguage? introduced. http://mh.cla.umn.edu//ebibsw1.html 1987 Apple introduces HyperCard, Bill Atkinson 1987 Hypertext'87 first major conference on hypertext 1988 Eric Drexler and Ted Nelson develop the concept of 'ents'; AutoDesk funds a new attempt to implement Xanadu 1989 1990 1991 World Wide Web at CERN becomes first global hypertext, TimBernersLee 1992 New York Times Book Review cover story on hypertext fiction 1993 Mosaic from National Center for Supercomputing Applications; AutoDesk withdraws from the XanaduProject 1993 Hypermedia encyclopedias sales cause the diminishing influence of the printed ones 1994 WikiWiki - An online hypertext authoring system utilizing WikiWords as HyperLinks, easily editable by all users introduced by WardCunningham 1995 Bibliography of Early Electronic Texts some of which employing hypertext http://mh.cla.umn.edu//ebib.html 1996 1997 1998 1999 Code from two iterations of the XanaduProject is released OpenSource under the names 'Udanax Green' and 'Udanax Gold' 2000 2001 January - WikiPedia - An online hypertext collaborative encyclopedia formed 2002

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Is the history of hypertext complete? Has the ubiquity of the World Wide Web, HTML, & HTTP made hypertext research a dead field?

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