History of hypertext
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (February 2017) |
History
Recorders of information have long looked for ways to categorize and compile it. There are various methods of arranging layers of references/annotations within a document. Other reference works (for example dictionaries, encyclopaedias) also developed a precursor to hypertext: the setting of certain words in small capital letters, indicating that an entry existed for that term within the same reference work. Sometimes the term would be preceded by an
"The concept Borges described in 'The Garden of Forking Paths'—in several layers of the story, but most directly in the combination book and maze of Ts'ui Pen—is that of a novel that can be read in multiple ways, a hypertext novel. Borges described this in 1941, prior to the invention (or at least the public disclosure) of the electromagnetic digital computer. Borges also mentions how hypertext has three similarities of frued to a labyrinth in which each link brings the navigator to a set of new links, in an ever expanding maze. Not only did he invent the hypertext novel—Borges went on to describe a theory of the universe based upon the structure of such a novel." —Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort[3]
Umberto Eco has also referenced Finnegans Wake in the same way.[citation needed]
Later, several scholars entered the scene who believed that humanity was drowning in information, causing foolish decisions and duplicating efforts among scientists. These scholars proposed or developed proto-hypertext systems predating electronic computer technology. For example, in the early 20th century, two visionaries attacked the cross-referencing problem through proposals based on labor-intensive,
Michael Buckland summarized the very advanced pre-World War II development of microfilm based on rapid retrieval devices, specifically the microfilm based workstation proposed by Leonard Townsend in 1938 and the microfilm and photoelectronic based selector, patented by Emanuel Goldberg in 1931.[4] Buckland concluded: "The pre-war information retrieval specialists of continental Europe, the 'documentalists,' largely disregarded by post-war information retrieval specialists, had ideas that were considerably more advanced than is now generally realized." But, like the manual index card model, these microfilm devices provided rapid retrieval based on pre-coded indices and classification schemes published as part of the microfilm record without including the link model which distinguishes the modern concept of hypertext from content or category based information retrieval.
The Memex
All major histories of what we now call hypertext start in 1945, when
The invention of hypertext
Starting in 1963, Ted Nelson developed a model for creating and using linked content he called "hypertext" and "hypermedia" (first published reference 1965).[6] Ted Nelson said in the 1960s that he began implementation of a hypertext system he theorized which was named Project Xanadu, but his first and incomplete public release was finished much later, in 1998.[5] He later worked with Andries van Dam to develop the Hypertext Editing System (HES) in 1967 at Brown University. HES was the first hypertext system available on commercial equipment that novices could use, and it didn't have arbitrary limits on text lengths.[7]
Douglas Engelbart independently began working on his NLS system in 1962 at Stanford Research Institute, although delays in obtaining funding, personnel, and equipment meant that its key features were not completed until 1968. In December of that year, Engelbart demonstrated a hypertext interface to the public for the first time, in what has come to be known as "The Mother of All Demos". Funding for NLS slowed after 1974.
Later in 1968, van Dam's team incorporated ideas from NLS into a successor to HES: the File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS), which was the first hypertext system to run on readily-available commercial hardware and OS.[8] The user interface was simpler than NLS. By 1976
Influential work in the following decade included
Early hypertext applications
The first hypermedia application was the Aspen Movie Map in 1978. In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee created ENQUIRE, an early hypertext database system somewhat like a wiki. The early 1980s also saw a number of experimental hypertext and hypermedia programs, many of whose features and terminology were later integrated into the Web. Guide was the first significant hypertext system for personal computers. In 1983, a hypermedia authoring tool, Tutor-Tech, designed for Apple II computers, was produced for educators.
In August 1987,
Meanwhile, Nelson, who had been working on and advocating his Xanadu system for over two decades, along with the commercial success of HyperCard, stirred Autodesk to invest in his revolutionary ideas. The project continued at Autodesk for four years, but no product was released.
van Dam's research groups at Brown University continued working as well. For example, in the late '70s Steve Feiner and others developed an ebook system for Navy repair manuals, and in the early '80s Norm Meyrowitz and a large team at Brown's
Hypertext and the World Wide Web
In the late 1980s, Berners-Lee, then a scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web to meet the demand for simple and immediate information-sharing among physicists working at CERN and different universities or institutes all over the world.
"HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will. It provides a single user-interface to large classes of information (reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line help). We propose a simple scheme incorporating servers already available at CERN... A program which provides access to the hypertext world we call a browser... " Tim Berners-Lee, R. Cailliau. 12 November 1990, CERN[12]
In 1992, Lynx was born as an early Internet web browser. Its ability to provide hypertext links within documents that could reach into documents anywhere on the Internet began the creation of the Web on the Internet.
Early in 1993, the
After the release of web browsers for both the
In 1995, Ward Cunningham made the first wiki available, making the Web more hypertextual by adding easy editing, and (within a single wiki) backlinks and limited source tracking. It also added the innovation of making it possible to link to pages that did not yet exist. Wiki developers continue to implement novel features as well as those developed or imagined in the early explorations of hypertext but not included in the original web.
See also
References
- ^ Wright, Alex (2014-05-22). "The Secret History of Hypertext". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
- ^ "Inventing the Medium", Janet H. Murray
- ISBN 0-262-23227-8.
- ^ Buckland, Michael K. "Emanuel Goldberg, Electronic Document Retrieval, And Vannevar Bush's Memex", 1992
- ^ WIRED. Vol. 3, no. 6.
- ^ "Did Ted Nelson first use the word "hypertext" at Vassar College?"". Archived from the original on 2013-03-24. Retrieved 2011-01-03.
- ^ a b Barnet, Belinda (2010-01-01). "Crafting the User-Centered Document Interface: The Hypertext Editing System (HES) and the File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS)". Digital Humanities Quarterly. 4 (1).
- ^ Steven DeRose and Andries van Dam. "Document structure and markup in the FRESS hypertext system" (sometimes cited as "The Lost Books of Hypertext"). In *Markup Technology* Vol. 1, Issue 1 - Winter 1999. Cambridge: MIT Press. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=313600
- ^ "Where meter meets mainframe: An early experiment teaching poetry with computers | News from Brown". news.brown.edu. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
- ^ "Microscope: The Hazards of HyperCard, COMPUTE! April 1988".
- ^ Hawisher, Gail E., Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia L. Selfe (1996). Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood NJ, p. 213
- ^ Roads and Crossroads of Internet History Chapter 4: Birth of the Web
- ^ WWW-Talk Jan-Mar 1993: Re: proposed new tag: IMG
- ^ WWW-Talk Jan-Mar 1993: Support for CSO and gopher type 2