But he imagined it all being done using microfilms and electric sensors and mechanics because he didn't have computers and he didn't have the internet then, and then Ted Nelson invented the idea of hypertext.
When the 1930 Census records and those from earlier decades were released, searches largely were confined to people able to trek to National Archives facilities and depository libraries to work through microfilms produced by the Census Bureau in the 1930s and 40s.