3. A Search Engine Centuries before Google

Year: 1895

Technology: Public Search Engine

There are many web search engines available today, Google being the most famous one, which could scan through millions of terabytes of data and present relevant results to a particular input of keywords or queries.  

How was it implemented?

Centuries before Google, in the year 1895, Belgian scientist Paul Otlet’s mind sprung this idea of collecting information available to human society across the globe and make it available to the whole world. They hired a number of librarians who would collect, store and categorize data in this huge data centre called the Mundaneum. People could write mails to the Mundaneum querying anything that they would like to know and the organization would send a collection of relevant data back within few days. Otlet had also thought of implementing a network of electric microscopes that would enable people to search from billions of interlinked documents along with creating social circles within the network. Sounds a lot like Facebook though; the system was closed down due to various financial troubles and the unfortunate occurrence of the world wars.