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Hypertext theorist, George P Landow asserts that the idea of a hypertextual system was invented by Vannevar Bush in his 1945 article in Atlantic Monthly where he stated the need for "information-retrieval machines" (Landow, 1992 p15) to tackle the "growing mountain of research" (Landow, 1992 p15) facing workers. Bush believed that the contemporary system of indexing was inadequate in that "the human mind does not work that way…but by association" (Landow, 1992 p15). In response to this thought, he created the "Memex" as an "enlarged supplement to his memory" (Landow, 1992 p15). This association highlighted by Bush has become today what we term a link.

In 1965, Ted Nelson, a "prominent disciple" (Landow 1992 p.14) of Vannevar Bush "coined the word" (McAleese, 1999 p.vi) hypertext, furthered Bush's ideas by suggesting a "unique address for every byte of information in the world" (McAleese, 1999 p.vi). By 1967 Andy van Dam of Brown University turned these concepts into a reality, creating the first "useful hypertext editing system." (McAleese, 1999 p.vi)