Linnaeus builds a search engine

Linnaeus builds a search engine

Botanists and zoologists in the 18th Century faced an explosion of species. What they needed was the equivalent of a search engine, and Carl Linnaeus rose to the challenge. He invented a cataloguing system that made it possible to find out whether a specimen belonged to a known species, and if it did, where more information could be found. His system was more powerful than an index, which requires knowing a name to begin with, while a user of hi…