This article presents a

timeline A timeline is a display of a list of events in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events. Timelines can use any suitable scale representi ...

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...

technology, including "

hypermedia Hypermedia, an extension of the term hypertext, is a nonlinear medium of information that includes graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks. This designation contrasts with the broader term ''multimedia'', which may include non-interac ...

" and related human–computer interaction projects and developments from 1945 on. The term ''hypertext'' is credited to the author and philosopher

Ted Nelson Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms ''hypertext'' and ''hypermedia'' in 1963 and published them in 1965. Nelson coined the terms ''transcl ...

. See also

Graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

Multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

; also

Paul Otlet Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet (; ; 23 August 1868 – 10 December 1944) was a Belgian author, entrepreneur, lawyer and peace activist; predicting the arrival of the internet before World War II, he is among those considered to be the father of infor ...

and Henri La Fontaine's

Mundaneum The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system called the Universal Decimal Classification. It was developed at the turn of the 20th century by Belgian lawyers Paul ...

, a massively cross-referenced card index system established in 1910.

1940s

* 1941 **

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...

' " The Garden of Forking Paths" * 1945 ** Memex (concept by

Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime ...

)

1960s

* 1960 **

Project Xanadu Project Xanadu ( ) was the first hypertext project, founded in 1960 by Ted Nelson. Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it superior to the World Wide Web, with the mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper. The World ...

(concept) * 1962 **

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...

's '' The Gutenberg Galaxy'' uses the term ''surfing'' * 1967 ** Hypertext Editing System (HES) by

Andries van Dam Andries "Andy" van Dam (born December 8, 1938) is a Dutch-American professor of computer science and former vice-president for research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Together with Ted Nelson he contributed to the first hyper ...

and

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

* 1968 **

FRESS The File Retrieval and Editing SyStem, or FRESS, was a hypertext system developed at Brown University starting in 1968 by Andries van Dam and his students, including Bob Wallace. It was the first hypertext system to run on readily available comm ...

(File Retrieval and Editing System, successor to HES) ** NLS (oN-Line System)

1970s

* 1972 ** ZOG * 1973 ** Xerox Alto desktop * 1976 ** PROMIS * 1978 ** Aspen Movie Map * 1979 ** PERQ

1980s

* 1980 ** ENQUIRE (not released) * 1981 ** Electronic Document System (EDS, aka Document Presentation System) ** Kussmaul Encyclopedia ** Xerox Star desktop * 1982 ** Guide * 1983 **

Knowledge Management System Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...

(KMS, successor to ZOG) ** TIES (The Interactive Encyclopedia System, later HyperTies) * 1984 **

NoteCards NoteCards was a hypertext-based personal knowledge base system developed at Xerox PARC by Randall Trigg, Frank Halasz and Thomas Moran in 1984. NoteCards was developed after Trigg's pioneering 1983 Ph.D. thesis on hypertext while at the Universi ...

* 1985 ** Intermedia (successor to FRESS and EDS) **

Symbolics Document Examiner Symbolics Document Examiner is a powerful and early hypertext system developed at Symbolics (a manufacturer of high-end workstations) by Janet Walker in 1985. The Symbolics Document Examiner was first used for a hypertext implementation of the Symbo ...

(Symbolics

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...

s) * 1986 **

Texinfo Texinfo is a typesetting syntax used for generating documentation in both on-line and printed form (creating filetypes as , , , etc., and its own hypertext format, ) with a single source file. It is implemented by a computer program released as fr ...

** TextNet (a network-based approach to text handling) **

Neptune Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times ...

(a hypertext system for CAD applications) * 1987 **

Macromedia Authorware Adobe Authorware (previously Macromedia Authorware, originally Authorware) was an elearning authoring tool with its own interpreted, flowchart-based, graphical programming language. Authorware was used for creating interactive elearning programs ...

Canon Cat Canon Cat is a task-dedicated desktop computer released by Canon Inc. in 1987 at the price of U.S. $1,495. On the surface, it was not unlike dedicated word processors popular in the late 1970s to early 1980s, but it was far more powerful, and inco ...

("Leap" function, interface) ** HyperCard **

Knowledge Navigator The Knowledge Navigator is a concept described by former Apple Computer CEO John Sculley in his 1987 book, ''Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple''. It describes a device that can access a large networked database of hypertext information, and use software age ...

(concept described by former

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

CEO John Sculley in his book ''Odyssey'') ** Storyspace * 1988 **

Microcosm (hypermedia system) Microcosm was a hypermedia system, originally developed in 1988 by the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, with a small team of researchers in the Computer Science group: Wendy Hall, Andrew Fountain, Hu ...

(

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

) * 1989 **

Macromedia Director Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director, MacroMind Director, and MacroMind VideoWorks) was a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia and managed by Adobe Systems until its discontinuation. Director was the primary edi ...

*
Information Management: a proposal

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

1990s

* 1990 ** DynaText **

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

** '' Hyperland'' (BBC documentary written by Douglas Adams) **

ToolBook ToolBook was a Microsoft Windows based e-learning content authoring application, initially released in 1990 by Asymetrix Corporation, now SumTotal Systems. ToolBook uses a book metaphor — a project file is thought of as a ''book'' containing ' ...

HyTelnet HyTelnet (sometimes rendered ''Hytelnet'' or ''HYTELNET'') was an early attempt to create a universal or at least simpler interface for the various Telnet-based information resources available before the World Wide Web. It was first developed in ...

WinHelp Microsoft WinHelp is a proprietary format for online help files that can be displayed by the Microsoft Help browser ''winhelp.exe'' or ''winhlp32.exe''. The file format is based on Rich Text Format (RTF). It remained a popular Help platform from ...

* 1991 **

Gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...