29 Mar
2018
29 Mar
'18
4:45 p.m.
If only that
were 16mm or 35mm continuous rolls, instead of microfiche!
In 1931, Emanuel Goldberg, then a chief engineer at Zeiss built the "Statistical
Machine". By recording bits optically in the margins of microfilm, and reading them
with photocells, it could find appropriate frames!
For use in soundtrack for films, Mauer puts up to 8 parallel variable area optical tracks
in the margin!
8 bit parallel!
Goldberg was also apparently responsible for the Contax camera.
BUT, in the days leading up to World War Two, he fled Dresden and Zeiss could not afford
to have mention of a Jew in a high profile position, and by the time the war ended, they
had systematically erased most clues that he had existed!
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/goldberg.html
A decade later, Vannevar Bush stole the idea, and without credit, claimed it as his own,
as the foundation for his Memex device.
[...] An article (
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/goldbush.html ) on your referenced site
assesses the state of the art in between Goldberg and Bush (1931-1938).
Near the end the writer states:
" Three considerations suggest that he [Bush] was unaware of the detail
of Goldberg's work when he [Bush] built his prototype in 1938-40: [. . .] "
and makes no conclusion of conscious influence (on Bush by Goldberg).
So when you say Bush "stole", and "claimed it as his own", etc., do
you have some other reference or is this merely your pejorative accusation and hyperbole?
Yes, my statement was overy harsh.
Yes, I knew Buckland's research well. He was my PhD advisor.
No, there is no smoking gun.
(cf. no Gary Kildall easter egg in MS-DOS)
During the early stages, over 20 years ago, ran into a few references to
others in the field who felt slighted over not being credited by Bush,
including one who had met personally with Bush, and who made mention
in passing of having discussed the prior work (inc. Goldberg) with Bush.
Bush did not successfully build his machine.
(Not the Memex you mention, but, as discussed in the article, he did build the
predecessor 'microfilm rapid selector'.) > Bush's Atlantic Monthly article, "As We
May Think" is sometimes considered the foundation of modern information science.
> Bush did not understand nor accept the concepts of index nor hierarchical
organization, so he pushed for linkage to go from one topic into another.
> Ted Nelson credits it as the inspiration for Hypertext, and Cern credits Ted nelson.
Bush did do some important stuff. Nobody else accomplished as much
towards raising consciousness of the whole idea of Information Science.
Ted Nelson, when he coined the term "Hypertext", explicitly credits Bush
with the concept.
He is far from the only person who prefer to think in terms of chained
links rather than hierarchical structures for information.
There's a decent example of casual "surfing" in "Hyperland" (BBC;
Douglas
Adams, Ted Nelson, and Tom Baker in 1990 talking about the future of the
internet. I have made an SRT file for it.)