Grandfather of Hypertext:

The concept of a hypertext type system was first proposed by
Vannevar Bush, national science adviser to President Franklin
Roosevelt.  Bush realized that as a result of the technological
and socioeconomic changes wrought by World War II, the world was
on the threshold of an information revolution of staggering
proportions.  Bush recognized that the rapidly increasing volume
of information (knowledge) was compounding the complexities of
decision processes.  He perceived that to productively harness
information resources, it would be essential to develop an
integrated and comprehensively indexed storage and retrieval
system that could effectively manage this information explosion. 

<cfile25>   Hypertext Introduction
<cfile27>   Memex