,
Henri La Fontaine, and his wife Mathilde Lhoest in front of the
Palais Mondial at the
Cinquantenaire in Brussels The Mundaneum was created in 1910, following an initiative begun in 1895 by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, as part of their work on
documentation science. Otlet first called it the
Palais Mondial ("World Palace"), and it occupied the left wing of the
Cinquantenaire Palace, a government building in Brussels. Otlet and La Fontaine organized an International Conference of International Associations, which was the origin of the
Union of International Associations (UIA). Otlet regarded the project as the centrepiece of a new "world city"—a centrepiece, which eventually became an
archive with more than 12 million
index cards and documents. Some consider it a forerunner of the
Internet (or, perhaps more appropriately, of systematic knowledge projects such as
Wikipedia and
WolframAlpha), and Otlet himself had dreams that one day, somehow, all the information he collected could be accessed by people from the comfort of their own homes. An English pamphlet published in 1914 described it: Otlet created plans for a "réseau" or network of "electric telescopes" in 1934 to allow people to search through a large quantity of interlinked documents. His idea included the ability to send messages between researchers and to create virtual communities. Too early for computers, his plan made use of physical cards and telegraphs. The Mundaneum was originally housed at the Cinquantenaire Palace in Brussels. This was originally renamed
Palais Mondial, before the name Mundaneum was adopted. Otlet commissioned architect
Le Corbusier to design a Mundaneum project to be built in
Geneva in 1929. which became central to his activities when he moved to the Netherlands as a refugee following the defeat of the
Austrian Social Democratic Party in the
Austrian Civil War. In 1936, the Mundaneum Institute launched the
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.
Later years and museum , Belgium) When
Nazi Germany invaded Belgium in 1940, the Mundaneum was replaced with an exhibit of
Third Reich art, and some material was lost. On Android phones, "The Mundaneum App offers visitors 3 unique experiences that delve into its rich and influential including 'The Origins of the Internet in Europe', the '100th Anniversary of a Nobel Peace Prize', and 'Mapping Knowledge'." ==Media==