Electronic Museum Institute: A Historical Reference Document

Abstract

This technical note provides a comprehensive historical summary of the Electronic Museum Institute proposal, written in January 1984 by Michael P. Hamilton at the James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve, Idyllwild, California. The proposal represents the first formal articulation of what would become a forty-year research program integrating ecological monitoring, information processing, and knowledge dissemination—the conceptual foundation of the Macroscope. The document synthesizes five archival scans totaling approximately fifty pages, preserving the technical specifications, organizational structure, and intellectual framework of this pioneering vision for computer-aided ecological reserve management. The proposal anticipated key developments in hypermedia, embedded sensor networks, expert systems, and environmental informatics by decades, making it a significant historical document in the evolution of ecological cyberinfrastructure.

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