ENQUIRE was an early project (in the second half of 1980) of Tim Berners-Lee, who went on to create the World Wide Web in 1989. ENQUIRE had some of the same ideas as the Web and the Semantic Web but was different in several important ways, one of them that it was not supposed to be released to the general public. ENQUIRE was written in the PASCAL programming language and implemented on a Norsk Data machine.

According to Berners-Lee (2000), the name was inspired by a book entitled Enquire Within Upon Everything.

Rather than a web browser, ENQUIRE was closer to a wiki:

• database, though a closed system (all of the data could be taken as a workable whole)
• bidirectional hyperlinks (in Wikipedia and MediaWiki, this is the What links here feature). This bidirectionality allows ideas, notes, etc. to link to each other without the author being aware of this. In a way, they (or, at least, their relationships) get a life on their own.
• direct editing from the server (like wikis and CMS/blogs)
• ease of compositing, particularly when it comes to hyperlinking.

See also

• Project Xanadu
• NLS (computer system)

External links

• ENQUIRE Manual
• Tim Berners-Lee FAQ including ENQUIRE information

References

Berners-Lee, T. (2000). Weaving the web. The original design and ultimate destiny of the world wide web. NY: Harper Business.

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