Paul Otlet

2026· 2 entries

Aug 23, 2026Documented record70% confidence

“The First World War marked the end of the intellectual as well as sociopolitical era in which Otlet had functioned hitherto with remarkable success. After the war, he and his schemes were never taken seriously except with the circle of his disciples. He quickly lost the support of the Belgian government. In the late 1920s he faced the defection of his followers in the International Institute of Documentation, as the International Institute of Bibliography”

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Aug 23, 2026Documented record76% confidence

Paul Otlet

“s creator, asking for permission to modify his system in a way closer to Otlet”

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2008· 2 entries

Oct 13, 2008Documented record69% confidence

Paul Otlet

Gizmodo: Paul Otlet Predicts the Internet in 1934

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Jun 18, 2008Documented record69% confidence

Paul Otlet

Radio World: Paul Otlet, Internet Visionary

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1999· 1 entry

Jan 1, 1999Documented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

“Fashioning The Emerging World Brain / World Mind”

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1989· 1 entry

1989Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

By the Centre de Lecture publique de la Communauté française in Belgium

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1985· 1 entry

1985Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Belgian academic André Canonne raised the possibility of recreating the Mundaneum as an archive and museum devoted to Otlet and others associated with them; his idea initially was to house it in the Belgian city of Liège

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1944· 2 entries

Dec 10, 1944Documented record86% confidence

Paul Otlet

Died 1944-12-10.

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1944Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

Not long before the end of World War II, having seen his major project, the Mundaneum, shuttered, and having lost all his funding sources

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1934· 2 entries

1934Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

The Belgian government again cut off funding for the project, and the offices were closed

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1934Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Otlet laid out this vision of the computer and internet in what he called "Radiated Library" vision

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1933· 1 entry

1933Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Otlet proposed building in Belgium near Antwerp a "gigantic neutral World City" to employ a massive number of workers, in order to alleviate the unemployment generated by the Great Depression

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1922· 1 entry

1922Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Due to lack of support from the government of Prime Minister Georges Theunis, but was reopened after lobbying from Otlet and La Fontaine

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1919· 1 entry

1919Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

Soon after the end of World War I, they convinced the government of Belgium to give them the space and funding for this project, arguing that it would help Belgium bolster its bid to house the League of Nations headquart

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1914· 1 entry

1914Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

Published a book, "La Fin de la Guerre" ("The End of War") that defined a "World Charter of Human Rights" as the basis for an international federation

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1913· 2 entries

1913Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

By the Norwegian-American sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen and the French architect Ernest Hébrard of an impressive series of Beaux-Arts plans for a World Centre of Communication (1913)

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1913Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

La Fontaine won the Nobel Peace Prize, and invested his winnings into Otlet and La Fontaine's bibliographic ventures, which were suffering from lack of funding

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1910· 1 entry

1910Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Otlet and La Fontaine first envisioned a "city of knowledge", which Otlet originally named the "Palais Mondial" ("World Palace"), that would serve as a central repository for the world's information

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1907· 3 entries

1907Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

Édouard died, and the family struggled to maintain all parts of the business

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1907Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Following a huge international conference, Otlet and Henri La Fontaine created the Central Office of International Associations, which was renamed to the Union of International Associations in 1910, and which is still lo

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1907Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

With Henri La Fontaine, later participated to the development of both the League of Nations and the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, which was later merged with UNESCO

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1906· 1 entry

1906Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

With his father Édouard near death and his businesses falling apart, Paul and his brother and five step-siblings formed a company, Otlet Frères ("Otlet Brothers") to try to manage these businesses, which included mines a

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1904· 1 entry

1904Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Otlet and La Fontaine began to publish their classification scheme, which they termed the Universal Decimal Classification

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1896· 1 entry

1896Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

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; scholar Charles van den Heuvel has referred to the service as an "analog search e

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1895· 3 entries

1895Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

With La Fontaine after organizing the First International Conference on Bibliography together

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1895Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

Came across the Dewey Decimal Classification, a library classification system that had been invented in 1876 by Melvil Dewey

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1895Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Otlet and La Fontaine also began the creation of a collection of index cards, meant to catalog facts, that came to be known as the "Repertoire Bibliographique Universel" (RBU), or the "Universal Bibliographic Repertory"

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1894· 2 entries

1894Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Had Art Nouveau architect Octave van Rysselberghe build his mansion in Brussels, the so-called Hotel Otlet

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1894Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

His father became a senator in the Belgian Senate for the Catholic Party

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1892· 1 entry

1892Source gives the year onlyDocumented record66% confidence

Paul Otlet

By Belgium's Societé des Sciences sociales et politiques (Society of social and political sciences) to create bibliographies for various of the social sciences; they spent three years doing this

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1891· 1 entry

1891Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

Otlet met Henri La Fontaine, a fellow lawyer with shared interests in bibliography and international relations, and the two became good friends

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1871· 1 entry

1871Source gives the year onlyDocumented record70% confidence

Paul Otlet

At the age of 24, when Otlet was three

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1868· 1 entry

Aug 23, 1868Documented record86% confidence

Paul Otlet

Born 1868-08-23.

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2026· 2 entries

2008· 2 entries

1999· 1 entry

1989· 1 entry

1985· 1 entry

1944· 2 entries

1934· 2 entries

1933· 1 entry

1922· 1 entry

1919· 1 entry

1914· 1 entry

1913· 2 entries

1910· 1 entry

1907· 3 entries

1906· 1 entry

1904· 1 entry

1896· 1 entry

1895· 3 entries

1894· 2 entries

1892· 1 entry

1891· 1 entry

1871· 1 entry

1868· 1 entry

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