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“Clearing House of Knowledge to Give Data on Any Source Under the Sun”, from the Washington [DC] “Times”, 5/30/1914 [p.3]. The Cooperative Information Bureau would seem to be an early attempt at something like the Internet, or more specifically, Wikipedia. It operated via the postal service and telephone. Firms and individuals who bought in to the service could be both contributors and beneficiaries. Others who were not “subscribers” could send a 2 cent stamp along with their request, and a reply would be mailed to them. Librarian G.W. Lee, the originator of this idea, conceived of information as a public utility, which he believed people and corporations would pay a nominal fee to obtain. Apparently, he had to learn the hard way that people expect information to be free. I can find no evidence that his Cooperative Information Bureau succeeded in any measurable way, but it stands as a remarkable early attempt to create something like a easily accessible network of knowledge almost a hundred years before data could be transmitted over fiber optic cables.
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