The forgotten 80-year-old machine that scientists say could be the key to surviving AI

Today's youngsters will never know the painstaking task of going to a library and searching for an article or a particular book. This tedious undertaking involved hours upon hours of trawling through drawers filled with index cards – typically sorted by author, title or subject. An explosion in research publications during the 1940s made it especially time-consuming to locate what you wanted, especially as this was before the invention of the internet. Now, an expert has lifted the lid on the man and the device that changed everything – and it could also be the key to surviving AI. Dr Martin Rudorfer, a lecturer in Computer Science at Aston University, said an American engineer called Vannevar Bush first came up with a solution, dubbed the'memex'.