How the “paper Internet” appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, and Why the project collapsed

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There are many ways to fight for peace - one of them was proposed back in the 19th century by the Belgians Paul Atlet and Henri Lafontaine. Information and its availability for everyone - that is what, in their opinion, should have led humanity away from military conflicts to the idea of unification for the sake of knowledge, for the sake of a common movement towards progress and enlightenment. Otlet and La Fontaine came up with an amazing project that really united many and many, but, alas, destroyed by the war.

How a unique storage of information appeared

You can read and listen as much as you like about the atmosphere in which the Europeans of the late 19th century were - the atmosphere of changes that affected all spheres of life, but it is not so easy for a modern person to imagine how it was in reality. It remains to be content with individual illustrations that complement the overall picture. Art Nouveau, revolution in various fields of scientific knowledge, political transformations, social transformations - the directions of change were enough for some private initiatives to get lost - however, which managed to get serious resonance in their time.

Few of the modern Internet users know the name of Paul Otlet, who, by the way, not only foresaw serious transformations in the information life of society, but also participated in their preparation. And all because one day he, the son of a successful businessman and a successful lawyer, who received an excellent education and a great start in his career, nevertheless decided to devote himself to the science of bibliography - the one that is related to information management, compiling catalogs, lists, describing books. and other written and printed sources. Paul Otlet was born in 1868 in Brussels, until the age of 11 he studied at home, by the way - teachers were hired for him; the father did not find the school a suitable place for his son. Subsequently, the time came for an educational institution for the Jesuits, then a college and a university, a doctorate in law, and work in a law office. From early childhood, Otlet endured a great love for reading, for books that once successfully replaced his friends. Literature helped cope with loneliness - Paul lost his mother when he was three years old.

At 23, Otlet met Henri La Fontaine, also a Belgian and also a specialist in the field of law, passionate about the theory of data classification. This friendship will play an important role in the fate of both. Otlet and La Fontaine decided to join the Society for Social and Political Sciences, which allowed them to delve into bibliographic issues. Three years later, Otlet founded the International Institute of Bibliography. Why did two respectable, successful lawyers devote so much attention not to finding new information, but to improving the work with what was already found, organizing it, bringing it into a searchable form? The thing is that both were convinced: peace - as an alternative to war - is achievable when different cultures have the opportunity to freely exchange information. It was necessary to create conditions under which access to any data would be as easy as access to any type of weapon.

Therefore, a few years later, the first and largest data warehouse and search engine in the pre-Internet era appeared - Mundaneum.

Mundaneum, or "World Palace"

The purpose of creating "Mundaneum" was to unite in one place all human knowledge about the world. This new kind of global library was to become a tool available to everyone on Earth. Whatever question arose in my head - about political trends or the climate of Africa, exchange rates, a recipe for English pudding - the well-oiled mechanism of the Mundaneum structure was supposed to provide a prompt response. All this is very similar to how modern society lives, which has made computers and the worldwide network a part of everyday life. As for the beginning of the last century, or rather, even the end of the one before last, when Mundaneum was still conceived, the project looked as grandiose and laborious as it was promising. Otlet and La Fontaine set to work to implement it. It was required to develop a system for storing and using a very large amount of data, which at that time existed in paper form.

By 1910, the companions received support from the Belgian government. A large room was allocated for the location of the data warehouse in the Park of the Fiftieth Anniversary in Brussels - the left wing of the palace with dozens of rooms. And in 1920, the "city of knowledge" began its work. At the heart of the new venture were numerous boxes of cards - a total of 12 million indexes were set up, as well as a press repository, thematic selections on various topics - an encyclopedic overview of all human knowledge. In the future, such an archive was to become the central element of a whole "city" of information, with a huge library and an International Museum. A search service was also launched. A specially recruited staff of Mundaneum employees accepted inquiries by mail or telegraph. These letters were sorted, then they were searched for information, which was reprinted and sent in response to the person who sent the appeal. The work required not only a huge amount of human resources, but also an impressive amount of paper.

To streamline the process, Otlet came up with something like a "paper computer", a device that moved documents using wheels and knitting needles. And besides that, he seriously developed new systems that would make it possible to completely abandon paper when transferring information - the harbingers of future electronic communications. In some detail, he described devices that did not exist in his time, which have now become commonplace for a European of the XXI century: representative of Belgium at the Assembly of the League of Nations. By the way, back in 1913, La Fontaine was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "as the true leader of the popular movement for peace in Europe."

Occupation of Belgium and completion of the Mundaneum project

The book by Paul Otlet, where he described the principles of the computer, albeit without using such a name, was published in 1934. But the time for the development of such initiatives is over. By 1934, the Mundaneum had lost state support, and the German troops occupying the country disposed of the palace of the “city of knowledge” in their own way: its halls now housed an exhibition of art from the Third Reich. Both Paul Otle and Henri La Fontaine ended their days before the end of the Second World War II, and the Mundaneum project was not destined to recover. The remains of the archives were moved from one building to another several times, until Professor Reyward of the University of Chicago became interested in them. The scientist who defended his thesis on the activities of Paul Otlet, set out to revive the memory of the "Mundaneum".

In 1998, after several years of work in the Belgian town of Mons, the Museum "Mundaneum" was opened, where the atmosphere of the beginning of the last century was reproduced and the whole amount of work that was once done for the "paper Internet" was illuminated. By the way, in 2012 the museum and Google announced a collaboration - the role of the Belgian Mundaneum in the development of the global information system was highly appreciated.

And more recently, 20 years ago, the very electronic system of knowledge appeared about which science fiction writers wrote and which Otlet had foreseen - “Wikipedia”.