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A Hypertext Timeline
"There is properly no history; only biography."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, i. HistoryIndividuals pass like shadows; but the commonwealth is fixed and stable.
Edmund Burke
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1945 | Vannevar Bush published an article entitled "As We May Think" in The Atlantic Monthly in which he claimed that the progress of research was being stymied by the inability of researchers to find and access relevant information. Bush proposed the “memex” system, a microfiche-based system of documents and links which foreshadowed the advent of hypertext. Some of the requirements for the memex as specified by Bush: fast access to information, ability to annotate, and the ability to link and to store a trail of links. |
| 1962 | Douglas Engelbart published a paper, ‘Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework,’ which set Engelbart’s agenda for the 30 years that followed. Engelbart sought to define and implement the functionality necessary for computers to augment human abilities. The functions he thought necessary included links between texts, electronic mail, document libraries as well as separate “private” space on the computer for users’ personal les, computer screens with multiple windows, and the facilitation of work done in collaboration by more than one person. In the course of his career, Engelbart invented the mouse, outliner and idea processor, and on-line help systems integrated with software. Engelbart was responsible for the first substantive implementations of electronic mail, word processing, and shared screen teleconferencing. AUGMENT is marketed by McDonnell Douglas; Engelbart now heads the Bootstrap Institute at Stanford University, which aims to build prototypes of software and hardware that will help office workers collaborate. |
| 1965 | Theodor Holme Nelson invented the term “hypertext” and presented it to the world. He learned that “most people are afraid of (and/or angered by) new words and ideas” [Nelson, 1987, p. 1-29]. Nevertheless, Nelson has continued as universally acknowledged Ideologist of Hypertext, relentlessly fighting to construct Xanadu, a hypertext engine based on his version of hypertext. In 1988, Autodesk. Inc. invested in Xanadu and formed the Xanadu Operating Co. to produce and market Xanadu. |
| 1968 | Andries Van Dam and his team at Brown University developed the Hypertext Editing System, which was intended to serve two purposes: to produce printed documents nicely and efficiently and to explore the hypertext concept. Van Dam’s second hypertext project at Brown was called the File Retrieval and Editing System (PRESS, completed in 1982).
According to Van Dam, PRESS was the first system to have an undo function [Van Dam, 1988]; undo remains the most popular feature of many software packages. In latest hypertext project at Brown is called Intermedia. Intermedia-based applications are used in teaching and learning of biology and English Literature at Brown. Intermedia is used both as a tool for professors preparing their lessons and course materials and by students for learning and creating reports. One of the seminal ideas derived from Van Dam’s work is that of the "web", a set of links that belong together. By opening a web, a hypertext reader imposes a set of anchors and links on a document. This makes it possible for different users to impose their own sets of links on the same document. [Meyrowitz, 1990] |
| 1972 | The last of what Frank Halasz calls the "first generation" hypertext systems, ZOG, was developed at Carnegie-Mellon University. The first generation systems all originally ran on mainframes, used text to the exclusion of other media, and provided support for workers to collaborate on a hypermedia network. ZOG was specifically designed to provide fast response to a large number of users. |
| 1983 | The “second generation” of hypertext authoring products began in the early 1980s with the emergence of workstation-based, research-oriented systems such as Intermedia and KMS. The difference between the first and second generation of hypertext products had a lot to do with improvements in technology that became available on workstations. These faster computers and displays supported more sophisticated user interfaces than earlier systems could. The second generation systems are generally targeted at networked or UNIX-based, single-user workstations, not mainframes as the earlier products were. [Halasz, 1988]
KMS, a commercial implementation of ZOG, has been marketed since 1983. KMS is capable of storing text and graphics in its nodes, which are called “frames.” It is particularly appropriate for “industrial-strength hypertexts,” where many designers and engineers must share the same documents on a large computer network. |
| 1985 | In 1982, Peter Brown began to invent the first commercial hypertext authoring system for a personal computer, which was called Guide in 1985 when Office Workstations Limited (OWL) began to market it for the Apple Macintosh. Guide was released for use on an IBM-PC in 1987. Like other microcomputer-based hypertext authoring systems that came later, Guide provides less functionality than earlier mainframe and workstation-based products, but it does rely on a graphical user interface. Guide remains one provides less functionality than earlier mainframe and workstation-based products, but it does rely on a graphical user interface. Guide remains one of the few microcomputer-based hypertext products that encourages link typing. |
| 1986 | Xerox PARC’s NoteCards was released. NoteCards, KMS, and Intermedia all support graphics and animation nodes as well as formatted text. They also all provide graphical overviews of the structure of the hyperdocument to aid navigational access.
NoteCards pioneered in the application of metaphor to hypertext; each node in NoteCards is represented on screen as a card. NoteCards can be of any length necessary. Cards are classified as to type; some node typing has to |
| 1987 | “HyperCard isn’t really hypertext at all!” said Ted Nelson (who should know it when he sees it) when HyperCard came out [Nelson, 1989]. Well, HyperCard may not allow text-to-text links and it provides few of the frills most hypertext authors require for large scale hypertext production, but because it comes with every Macintosh sold, it certainly has brought a semblance of hypertext to the Macintosh masses.
As can be surmised from its name, HyperCard imposes a card metaphor on its nodes. No node can be larger than a card in size. A hyperdocument is called a stack in HyperCard, and HyperCard programs are called stackware. Cards in HyperCard are linked to other cards via link anchors called “buttons.” Also in 1987, the IBM-PC version of Hyperties, which began life in 1983 as The Interactive Encyclopedia System (TIES) at the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, was introduced. Hyperties relies on the metaphor of an electronic book or encyclopedia. |
| 1990 | There are now at least twenty commercially available hypertext authoring systems running on a variety of platforms. New versions of existing hypertext products such as HyperCard, Hyperties, and Guide are released regularly.
Hypertext conversion programs such as Texas Instrument’s HyperTRANS, OWL’s IDEX, and Big Science’s SmarText (now owned by Lotus), which convert existing electronic documents into hypertext, are becoming viable options or additions to business documentation plans. The demands of Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, and Ted Nelson have been vindicated and may soon be met. The flood of information continues unabated. "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." – Winston Churchill, Mansion House, 10 Nov. 1942 (about the Battle of Egypt). |