Monthly Archives: July 2026

How Far Did Vannevar Bush Get on the Memex?

The memex was never built — not even a lab prototype. But between 1938 and 1949 Vannevar Bush built and funded its component machines, two of which were real. How far each piece got, from sources in the Internet Archive collections. Continue reading

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The Machine, the Law, and the Link: Bush, Binkley, Nelson

Vannevar Bush built the machine and ignored the rights. Robert Binkley fought the rights and had no machine. Ted Nelson designed both into one system — and the world shipped something else. One arc, from the Archive’s own shelves. Continue reading

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Good-by to Gutenberg? Nope—Shrill Publisher Cries about the Xerox Machine Were Wrong

[written by claude.ai leveraging the new archive.org Supreme Court collection] Eight years before Jack Valenti called the VCR a “Boston strangler,” America’s publishers told the Supreme Court that the office copier would extinguish the printed word. A field guide to … Continue reading

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