MIT 150: The Top 50

Number 16: Before Google Perhaps Google owes a debt to MIT professor and administrator Vannevar Bush . Bush, who also served as a science adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, conceived of a database-like device that would store all of an individual’s books and correspondence and let that person search it instantly. The memex, wrote Bush, would be an “intimate supplement to his memory.” (Just like searching your Gmail account for that to-do list your spouse sent you last month).
Carnegie Institution

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Number 16: Before Google

Perhaps Google owes a debt to MIT professor and administrator Vannevar Bush. Bush, who also served as a science adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, conceived of a database-like device that would store all of an individual’s books and correspondence and let that person search it instantly. The memex, wrote Bush, would be an “intimate supplement to his memory.” (Just like searching your Gmail account for that to-do list your spouse sent you last month).