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summary is intended to establish a basis for discussion even though some of it may be
familiar to those who know the article and its history well.
Drafts and Delays
2t-S-1Ed-D-P
There are a number of texts that explain the origin and eventual publication of the
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Memex article, principally the compilation by Nyce and Kahn (1991b), and sections of
the Zachary (1997) biography. As Nyce and Kahn point out, the article was really based
on ideas and technology from the early 1930s, and Bush later estimated that he first
formulated the Memex ideas around 1932. In 1937 he sought funding from the
Rockefeller Foundation to build a Memex-like machine although it was not called that
and it differed in some respects from the later Memex description (Nyce & Kahn, 1991a).
By the end of 1939, Bush had a draft of an article called “Mechanization and the Record”
which he sent to the publisher of Fortune magazine to get the publisher’s reaction. This
draft used the name “Memex” for the first time and in fact contained all the material in
the 1945 article except for the opening and concluding sections. For a number of
reasons, particularly the pressure of national defense matters, Bush set the article aside
and did little or nothing with it until 1944, submitting the draft this time (with a new
opening section reflecting the coming end of the war) to the Atlantic Monthly. The
Atlantic Monthly editor, in addition to publishing the article, decided to add an editor’s
introduction to highlight the importance of the article.
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John Wiley & Sons
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