The origins of the Internet in Europe

"Brussels, Belgium, Europe, 1895: two men shared a dream of « indexing and classifying the world’s information ». Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine’s work foreshadowed the network of knowledge that a century later became the Internet with its search engines! Otlet and La Fontaine aimed to preserve peace by assembling knowledge and making it accessible to the entire world. They built an international documentation center called Mundaneum. They invented the modern library Universal Decimal Classification system. La Fontaine won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913.  By 1935, their Mundaneum grew to a staggering 16 million cards covering subjects ranging from the history of hunting dogs to finance! World War II and the death of both founders slowed down the project. Although many Mundaneum archives were stored away, some even in the Brussels subway, volunteers kept the dream alive. The French community government of Belgium brought most of the archives to a beautiful Art Deco building in the heart of Mons near Brussels."

"Paul Otlet was a Belgian author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer and peace activist. He is considered as one of the fathers of information science, a field he called “Documentation“. The World Science Festival 2012 in New York recognized him as ”the father of the idea of Internet"."

"Henri La Fontaine was a Belgian lawyer. He promoted a vision of peace stemming from the global diffusion of information. "

"“Historians typically trace the origins of the World Wide Web” through a lineage of Anglo-American inventors like Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson. But more than half a century before Tim Berners-Lee released the first Web browser in 1991, Otlet described a networked world where “anyone in his armchair would be able to contemplate the whole of creation.” Alex Wright (New-York Times, 2008)"

"It started with two basic questions: What works have been written by an author? / What has been written on a subject? No restrictions were placed on the time, location, or language of the document. "

"The UDC is a numbering system based on the Decimal Classification of American librarian Melvil Dewey. After several additional developments, libraries around the world adopt it.  "

"Michael Buckland, professeur at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley"

"« Books no longer burden the desktop. A screen, with a telephone, replaces them. Far away, an immense building contains every book and every piece of information. Questions are asked by telephone, and the page providing the answer is made to appear on the screen to be read. »   Paul Otlet, "Traité de documentation", 1934 "

"“ This way, a moving image of the world will be established, a true mirror of its memory. From a distance, everyone will be able to read text, enlarged and limited to the desired subject, projected on an individual screen. This way, everyone will be able to contemplate creation, as a whole or in certain of its parts, from their armchair.” Paul Otlet, “Monde”, 1935"

"Otlet outlined these grand visions of easily accessible knowledge and interconnected data many decades before Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson first articulated them. And more importantly, he actually built an analog hypertext system."

"“Was the internet invented in 1934? The scientist whose 'televised book' foretold the world wide web seven decades ago” Daily Mail"

"In this era of digital switchovers and Web 2.0, the awareness of new challenges related not only to organizing and sharing knowledge but also to citizenship is starting to emerge. The essence of the Mundaneum is such as it lends depth and perspective to this digital revolution, which we are observing from a privileged standpoint..."