As We May Think
Vannevar Bush described the memex, a desk machine that stores documents and links them along trails of association.
Why it matters
The task was posed as helping thought rather than replacing the thinker, a framing Licklider and later retrieval systems returned to.
The article appeared in the month the war ended and addressed scientists returning to peacetime work. The memex was never built. What the record marks is the problem statement: a machine should hold the links between documents because human memory does not.