Notable Individual Biography
“
There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends.
The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers...
--Vannevar Bush (1945, p.95)
Introduction of Scientific Giants Vannevar Bush
W
hen the second world war explode, several scientists were gathered
for researching on "Manhattan project" to fight against the Nazi( Goldberg 1992,pp.429 ).
One of the initiators who came up the idea of the project is
Vannevar Bush, science consultant of president Roosevelt,
participated in several well-known scientific projects like,
hydrogen bomb, moon landing after the war ends. He also
conceived to set up marvelous scientific institutes like NSF.
Bush has creative thoughts, he likes to use it to bring benefits
to people. Since he had face similar problem that student in
scientific major did, (like doing calculus), he then invented
a difference equation machine with his student,
called "Rockefeller difference analyzer" (Bush and Caldwell 1945,pp.255).
It's initially a mechanic computer but being used by the US navy
after some electronic components were added (Boast 2017,pp.85; Michal 2018).
After that, Bush didn't stop researching because he believes
computer invented in the future is supposed to be using
electricity components, which could be as 100 times faster than
the mechanic ones, also it could do complicated calculating.
14 years later, Bush published an essay called "as we may think",
which includes a deep reflection on the information-exploding
times: though the predecessors had got huge scientific payoffs,
but we couldn't have enough time to learn all of
them (Bush 1945, pp.95).
To solve the problem, Bush used microfilming that could
compress a huge book in a tiny matchbox and a C-R tube to
show text, graphics on a glass screen and a vocoder to store sounds.
That is the initial analog computer, named MEMEX, the memory extender.
MEMEX imitates human beings' brain, it analog human's memorizing
process (Bush 1945,p.98-103).
MEMEX allowed users to read articles, and most importantly,
find related article to connect them together. Keep doing this,
users could set up an association system for relative articles,
adding notes and ideas on it, which benefits latter users searching information
from MEMEX easier and quicker. That's Bush's another main idea called
"trail" (Bush 1945,pp.100-101).
However, MEMEX is just a thought from Bush, it had never been actually
invented (Bruner 2020), but It's a cornerstone for lots of
subsequent inventions in computer science after Bush passed away (Michal 2018).
For example, the thought about digital compression to reach massive information storing bring up
the modern information storing technique, the thought of trail brings up hypertext, digital library,
even world wide web, informatics and information searching.
In 1980s, people set up Vanevar Bush Award to commemorate the great
contribution he did and commend people who brought great
contributions to computer science (NSB 2022).