Vannevar Bush was the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, a World War II organization which coordinated the research efforts of approximately 6000 scientists.

After the war he wrote an article entitled "As We May Think" [bush_think] which predicted many technological developments of the 20th century. His notion of a memex and the trails which it could build are strikingly similar to the full_hypertext systems discussed by more recent pioneers.