He invented the concept of what he called the memex in the 1930s, "a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility" and indicated what would become hypertext. His ideas were first published in the essay "As We May Think" in Atlantic Monthly in 1945. In the article, Bush predicted that, "Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified." A few months later (November 19th 1945) Life magazine published an article with several ilustrations showing what a memex machine, and its companion devices, could look like.
Vannevar Bush has an unfortunate eponym: vannevar [1] owing to his habit of overestimating technological challenges. He asserted that a nuclear weapon could not be made small enough to fit in the nose of a missile as in an ICBM. He also predicted "electronic brains" the size of the Empire State Building with a Niagara Falls-scale cooling system.
His name was pronounced Van-NEE-var. as in "receiver".
