On Thu, 23 Apr 2020, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: Goldberg's "Statistical machine" (Zeiss Ikon in Dresden, USA patent in 1931) was the use of light and photocells to identify frames of microfilm. Google Michael Buckland for lots more! http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/goldbush.html Maurer soundtracks for movies had up to 8 parallel variable width optical tracks. Microfilm with 8 bit parallel metadata would be cool. Much better known, Vannevar Bush's proposed/imaginary "Memex" ("As We May Think" 1945, Atlantic Monthly) was based on it, without attribution. "Few of his ideas were original" Bush disliked organization of information, particularly hierarchical, so he wanted "trails" from one article to another. Ted nelson credits Bush with the idea that inspired hypertext. Tim Berners-Lee credits Ted Nelson for the idea that inspired WWW.