prewar networked knowledge-base, pre-Bush: https://archive.org/details/paulotlet https://archive.org/details/paulotlet or google youtu.be Paul Otlet, visioni

prewar networked knowledge-base, pre-Bush: https://archive.org/details/paulotlet https://archive.org/details/paulotlet or google youtu.be Paul Otlet, visioning a web in 1934 biased incomplete list of link implementations pre HTML: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext#Implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext#Implementations The reason why WWW has taken off is very well described in: High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars. and has very little, if anything to do with the <a> incarnation, which as you say is a minor detail.