-originates after French Wars > Fifth French War (1892-5), with a spirit of pacifist utopianism

-one French author, Paul Otlet, seeks to establish an institution to consolidate knowledge of humanity

-and transmit it across borders

-in a "World Brain"

-successfully includes it in Charter for an International Forum

-gathers knowledge of all types

-not just books, also newspapers, magazines, and tabledisks

-and seeks to organize all this knowledge together into a single system

-data is converted into a microfilm format, and stored like that

-books either read from special readers, or just printed off and sent out

-initially uses index card to this end but instead decides to use Analyzers

-to organize and index this new data and copy it in the form of microfilm

-essentially, data now organized by the Universal Decimal Categorization

-which consists of three digit numbers, each of which represents some piece of data

-beyond this, indexing function invented for this purpose

-function which takes in string, then outputs a series of numbers which are guaranteed to be unique per string

-Analyzers purpose-built for this purpose, analogue

-combined with general three digit number as its decimal

-based on this index, placed in the data warehouse by the number

-consisting of the microfilm, the [Baudot code] and a list of associations on an additional, smaller roll of [Baudot code]

-associations being links between this data and other data, with an associated description on nature of their link

-additionally, several branches beyond Aix-la-Chapelle exist

-exact copies of data, with moves of new data every three months

-also data checked, consists of:

-adding together the last digits of the several indices per section and finding they're the right sum

-if they're not, isolated by adding together digits by subsection (and smaller) to find right data

-to distribute this, done by a few ways

-knowledge distilled into several encyclopedias, to be distributed around the world with microfilm

-microfilm records printed or disks pressed to be read

-or else there's a tape of [Baudot]code which is folded into a telegraph to be transmitted

-in the form of a text telegraph message which gets printed off on the other end

-this system is one which there is talk of improving

-combining several related-index microfilms and [Baudot]code tapes into singular

-with there being additional [Baudot]code describing where the start and stop of separate indices are

-this means that now, to look up appropriate data

-hook up lookup analyzer and type appropriate index

-then the reels are scrolled to appropriate position

-then read into output

-does make the act of adding data a bit tough

-need to copy over reels then add new data then continue to copy it

-means adding data is done every three months

-Aix-la-Chapelle acts as the "master" copy of the documents and other ones are "servant" copies which send it over

-and copy it down exactly

-main branches are additionally linked to several secondary branches

-largely main universities in several countries

-most particularly universities in Europe