Vannevar Bush was born in Massachusetts in 1890. He studied engineering at Tufts College. Whilst there he invented a land surveying device called a profile tracer.
He worked for General Electric after graduating from Tufts College testing electrical equipment. In 1915 Bush went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to study for a doctorate in engineering. In 1919 after a period back at Tufts College, he returned to MIT and worked on analog computers.
In 1945 Bush wrote an article entitled 'As We May Think' where he described a futuristic machine called a 'memex'. This would probably have worked in a similar way to the World Wide Web
