I've been creating a video that illustrates and demonstrates Vannevar Bush's "memex" concept, as some supplementary content for my hypertext system project, Alph.
The memex was a hypothetical information appliance that was, in effect, an electromechanical hypertext console. Bush described how it could work in a 1945 article that appeared in The Atlantic monthly (later reprinted in LIFE), and as it predates digital computers by a few years, the information storage medium for this very clever gizmo was good ol' microfilm.
I won't go into great detail explaining the operation of the memex – that's what the video is for – but I wanted to showcase some of the animations that I've made that demonstrate the user interface.
There's also a humorous comics interlude in the video where we see this enthusiastic mid-century memex user doing a little shopping and bringing home some new memex films.
The video still isn't done, but when it is it will go up onto the Alph project's YouTube channel, and then I'll embed it here.
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