Vannevar Bush

1890–1974 · American electrical engineer and science administrator

Topics: learning, history of computing, databases, software engineering

• If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

  — Vannevar Bush

• Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose.

  — Vannevar Bush

• It is the duty to carry on, under stress, the search for understanding.

  — Vannevar Bush

• Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.

  — Vannevar Bush

• A belief may be larger than a fact. A faith that is overdefined is the very faith most likely to prove inadequate to the great moments of life.

  — Vannevar Bush

• The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

  — Vannevar Bush

• The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.

  — Vannevar Bush

• Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

  — Vannevar Bush

• There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.

  — Vannevar Bush

• The publicly and privately supported colleges, universities, and research institutes are the centers of basic research. They are the wellsprings of knowledge and understanding.

  — Vannevar Bush

• Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy.

  — Vannevar Bush

• We puzzle as to whether the universe is bounded or extends forever; whether, indeed, it may only be one universe among many.

  — Vannevar Bush

• The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk.

  — Vannevar Bush

• There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

  — Vannevar Bush

• All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses — the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?

  — Vannevar Bush

• A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted.

  — Vannevar Bush

• Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile.

  — Vannevar Bush

• 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.

  — Vannevar Bush