Google and Mundaneum are proud to announce their collaboration

Brussels, 13 March 2012. In the presence of Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, Google and the Mundaneum announced their partnership to celebrate two exceptional Belgians, the Mundaneum’s founders Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, pioneers of the search engine.

More than a century before the invention of the Web in the nineties, Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine designed a filing system encompassing all the information in the world. Their aim consisted in working for peace by gathering knowledge and making it available to every people on the planet. They then founded the Mundaneum on the basis of the International Office of Bibliography .

‘The Mundaneum is already providing itself as a wonderful forum for experimentation for our Digital Innovation Valley, a place that combines history, cultural and technological innovation’ said Elio Di Rupo – Prime Minister of Belgium and Burgomaster of the City of Mons.

‘For Google, this mission feels strangely familiar. We should like to pay homage and celebrate the pioneers of computing and the Internet in Europe’ added Thierry Geerts – Director of Google Belgium.

Google is henceforth partner for the next exhibition of the Mundaneum: ‘Knowledge One Click Away! presented at the Mundaneum in Mons  from 2 October 2012. The aim of the exhibition consists in telling the tale of the history of the access to knowledge by putting the Mundaneum on the timeline of information sciences. The partners will also offer a series of conferences around the theme ‘Computing  Pioneers in Europe’.

French Louis Pouzin, (19/04/2012) inventor of the datagram and Robert Cailliau (22/10/2012), member of Tim Berners Lee CERN team and considered as the co-inventor of the web, have already accepted the invitation.