COM125 Assignment 2 - Hypertext 101

Trying to do research online without hypertext would be a long, daunting, and tedious task. Fortunately for us we have Ted Nelson to thank for that, in 1965 he coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in a paper to the ACM 20th national conference (Source). Hypertext most often refers to text on a computer that will lead the user to other, related information on demand. Hypertext represents a relatively recent innovation to user interfaces, which overcomes some of the limitations of written text. Rather than remaining static like traditional text, hypertext makes possible a dynamic organization of information through links and connections (called hyperlinks). Hypertext can be designed to perform various tasks; for instance when a user "clicks" on it or "hovers" over it, a bubble with a word definition may appear, or a web page on a related subject may load, or a video clip may run, or an application may open (Source).

In laymans terms " hypertext is text which contains links to other texts" (Source).

The first hypertext-based system was developed in 1967 by a team of researchers led by Dr. Andries van dam at Brown University, not to get him confused with the ever popular Jean Claude Van Dammae.

The research was funded by IBM and the first hypertext implementation, Hypertext Editing System, ran on an IBM/360 mainframe. IBM later sold the system to the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center which reportedly used it for the Apollo space program documentation. A year later, in 1968, van Dam developed FRESS, a File Retrieval and Editing System which was an improvement of his original Hypertext Editing System and was used commercially by Philips (Source).

Hypertext has completely changed the was we use the internet. Today not only does clicking on a link connect you to other articles but also pictures and videos. There isn't a web site that you go to that doesn't have a hypertext in some form or another. Without it citing articles would be almost impossible.