A Hypertext system is typically defined by the connection of non-linear information allowing people to establish, annotate, tie together and share their information from different medias, for example: text; sound; images and multimedia providing flexible access to information (V. Balasubramanian, 1994). In this short paper I will review Hypertext Systems from the year 1900 to the year 2000.

Although the word “Hypertext” was only brought to light by Ted Nelson in 1965 the first acknowledgement of a hypertext system was published in July 1945 when Vannevar Bush proposed Memex in his article “As We May Think”. The Memex system was defined by Vannevar Bush as "a sort of mechanized private file and library", this would store books, documents and other media, furthermore the user would be able to annotate and save their records on microfilm rolls stored under the user's desks. Memex was never implemented mainly due to the fact that Vannevar Bush was ahead of his time and the means to creating this system were not around in 1945 (Jakob Nielson, 1995), it has also been said that Vannevar Bush was the first to introduce a data cataloguing system (Kimberely Amaral), however after a deeper look into the origins of Memex it seems that the concept of Vannevar Bush’s Memex system had in fact developed from Paul Otlet who had foresaw the creation of a Universal Network for Information and who had originally written about the need for an “international information handling system” or “the development of a universal encyclopaedia” which would use microfilm to store its data (W. Rayward, 1993).

The first to be influenced by Vannevar Bush’s perception of Memex was Doug Englebart in 1962 when he started his work on the Augment Project (Kimberely Amaral); “Augment stored information in a sophisticated hierarchical structure allowing non-hierarchical branching, In order to make viewing easier and increase user speed he also developed the mouse and other viewing filters”(Kimberely Amaral). One part of the Augment Project was NLS or “oN-Line System”, this was built with many hypertext characteristics although it was not developed as a hypertext system (Jakob Nielson, 1995). NLS was the earliest system to apply practical usage to hyperlinked documents (Kathe Gust, 2006). In December 1968 Doug Englebart held a live public demonstration on NLS with his party of 17 researchers Zimmerman. 2011. p121), although Doug Englebart and his team had invented many of the concepts of modern computing and their demonstration had been a great success the American Government terminated funding for the Augment Project a few years later in 1975. Later a group of Doug Englebart’s workers moved on to Xerox PARC and helped with developing many more of the modern computing concepts; Englebart himself went on to developing the “Bootstrap Project” (Jakob Nielson, 1995).

Twenty years after Vannevar published “As We May Think” Ted Nelson was reading the article whilst waiting for a ship from the Phillipines, this is where Ted Nelson gained inspiration for the Project Xanadu; this is when Ted brought forward the word “Hypertext” (Jakob Nielson, 1995). Ted Nelson’s aim for the Project Xanadu had been to create a system capable of archiving the entire world’s information in one place with capabilities to link documents together using hyperlinks; this would come with many problems, copyright infringements being a large complication. Xanadu has never been implemented and it probably never will be (Jakob Nielson, 1995), however some people still believe that Ted Nelson’s goals will still be achieved in the future with evolving technology (Chris Boraski), a main reason for the systems failure is because Xanadu is not reverse compatible with legacy data (Jakob Nielson, 1995). It is said that Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu is not taken seriously however with closer examination it seems that Ted Nelson’s Xanadu along with his proposals and publications has acted as some of the key building blocks to many of the most visionary computer scientists to date (Gary Wolf, 1995).

In 1972 Alan Newell and George G. Robertson commenced development at Carnegie Mellon University on a new hypertext system named ZOG, this system was designed for use in multi user environment and famously used upon the aircraft USS Carl Vinson. There is no acronym for ZOG and the name was only chosen as it is short and easily remembered (Jakob Nielson, 1995). Due to ZOG's success Alan and George began to create their Knowlege management system or “KMS” which would be an improved version of ZOG and would be available for sale. KMS was designed for handling data and information within businesses and organisations; this proved to be very successful and was still used a good 20 years after its release.

The Intermedia System is an assortment of tools that enable different applications to link together with each other using an image viewer, an image editor, a text editor and more. The Intermedia System was developed at Brown University and released in 1985 (Furht, B. 1998. p790). The Intermedia system is mainly used in educational institutes such as universities in order to help teach courses in natural sciences and humanities. The system stores files with links for each separate user so that each student is able to make their own personal comments and annotations, when complete the system will store the file inside a new link on the users web (Nielson, J. 1995. p54)

One of the most recognised hypertext systems is NoteCards; designed at Xerox PARC in 1985, NoteCards was made famous due to the powerful design and also the amount of documentation held about the system. NoteCards is a very versatile system due to the many different layouts available and the amount of nodes that are able to be on screen at any one time, in fact users are able to edit and customise moteCards so much that the result could be classed as a new system (Jakob Nielson, 1995); this is confirmed in Reflections on Notecards: Seven Issues for the Next Generation of Hypermedia Systems (Frank Halasz, 1988). NoteCards picked up fast and was well endorsed by the consumers, especially in 1987 when Macintosh began to release the software pre-installed on to new Macintosh machines, free of charge. As NoteCards was the earliest hypertext system to be accessible by the general public it helped revolutionise the way we live today; NoteCards was a large factor in the basis of the World Wide Web.

The Guide System was developed at the University of Kent by Peter J. Brown and when released was the earliest popular commercial Hypertext System, originally designed in 1986 for Macintosh PC’s and later released for IBM PC’s; the interface was visually identical on both machines increasing usability; Guide is similar to NoteCards due to the scrolling text windows (Jakob Nielson, 1995). The Guide System used buttons known as replacement buttons, the three buttons were named: the Inquiry Replacement Button which was useful for multiple choice type applications as it used list options, the Note Button which was useful for footnote-type annotations and the Reference Button which was used to jump from one area of the hypertext to another and used a special backtrack icon to return to the original departure point (Jakob Nielson, 1995).

The World Wide Web, invented in March 1989 by Tim Berners-lee, is the most used hypertext system to date and by far the fastest developing, as an example for how fast the web began to grow, in January 1993 only approximately 50 web servers were in existence, however by October 1993 there amount of web servers had risen to around 500 (Wang Yuan-li, 1999). The success of the World Wide Web took only three years; something that Ted nelson was not able to do in over 30 years. There are many factors that contributed to the World wide Web's success; a major reason for this is that the World Wide Web is free of charge as tax payers contributed to the projects for the development; Memex however was funded by the American Government (Jakob Nielson, 1995).

In conclusion, the evidence of concepts for hypertext systems began many years before they were finally implemented with Augment/NLS and Xanadu. The extraordinary evolution of hypertext systemsRight from visions of the Memex System proposed by Vannevar Bush to revolutionise the way that we store and manage our data, to systems such as Xanadu which have been inspired by Vannevar Bush's Memex and so on. The World Wide Web that we use today which was made available in 1989 has been the most successful and fastest growing hypertext system to date with even more pathways and possibilities to explore in the future.

References

(Jakob Nielson, JN. (1995) The History of Hypertext. Retrieved from http://www.nngroup.com/articles/hypertext-history/)

(Chris Boraski, CB. History of Hypertext and the Web. Retrieved from http://www.boraski.com/www/hypertext.html).

(Frank Halasz, FH. (1988). Reflections on Notecards: Seven Issues for the Next Generation of Hypermedia Systems. Retrieved from http://www.ics.uci.edu/~redmiles/ics227-SQ04/papers/Hypertext/Secondary/p836-halasz.pdf).

(Wang Yuan-li, WY. (1999). World Wide Web. Retrieved from http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~wdutton/comm533/WWW-WANG.htm)

(W. Boyd Rayward, WR. Visions of Xanadu. (1993). Retrieved from http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~wrayward/Visions%20of%20Xanadu_JASIS.pdf)

(Gary Wolf, GW. The Curse of Xanadu. (1995). Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html)

(V. Balasubramanian, VB. (1994). State of the Art Review on Hypermedia Issues and Applications. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.36.2631%26rep=rep1%26type=pdf)

(Kimberely Amaral, KA. Hypertext and writing. Retrieved from http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/hypertext.html)

(Kathe Gust, KG. (2006). NLS Augment Index. Retrieved from http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/nlsproject)

(Zimmerman, J. (2011). Design Research Through Practice.)

(Furht, B. (1998). Handbook of Internet and Multimedia Systems and Applications)

(Nielson, J. (1995). Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond)