аватара для гугла In 1896, Otlet set up a fee-based service to answer questions by mail, by sending the requesters copies of the relevant index cards for each query[...] By 1912, this service responded to over 1,500 queries a year. Users of this service were even warned if their query was likely to produce more than 50 results per search.
Вот этот человек:

Спасибо
xgrbml. Там еще чудесная цитата.
PS И да, сразу вспоминается Нил Стивенсон.