The founders of the Mundaneum amongst 200 years of Information Age!

The London Science Museum opens its new “Information Age” gallery on 25 October 2014. With over 800 objects, it is the most ambitious gallery yet in this institution. It will retrace more than 200 years of innovation in communication and information technologies, through interactive displays and experiences, and personal histories from pioneers and users. The gallery will be divided into six zones – The Cable, The Telephone Exchange, Broadcast, The Constellation, The Cell and The Web – all the networks that shaped our communication over the last two centuries.

Otlet and La Fontaine, pioneers of the Web

The Web section will evoke numerous pioneers and forefathers, including, of course, Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. Relying on their intellectual international network, the founders of the Mundaneum created the Universal Decimal Classification and the Universal Bibliographic Repertory. This huge repertory, consisting of millions of cards, is the ancestor of contemporary search engines. Paul Otlet’s avant-gardist ideas also anticipated the technologies needed to classify and retrieve information: the “televised book” (our computer), the videoconference, the mobile phone, cloud recording, in a nutshell, everything that makes today’s global communication network!

It goes without saying that these two forefathers belong on the timeline of European pioneers of the Information Age.

More info

Het inaugural conference "Interpreting the Information Age" where Pr. emeritus Boyd Rayward, Otlet's first biographer, will be the first speaker
Discover what goes on behind the scene at the London Science Museum in this video
What Google says about this new gallery
The conference "Making the History of computing relevant" at the London Science Museum in which the Mundaneum took part