Roger Summit, Who Invented an Early Online Search Service, Dies at 95

In 1966, to pass the time on a long family road trip, Roger Summit pulled out a tape recorder and began dictating some thoughts about an idea he had been kicking around at work.

Mr. Summit, a research scientist for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, described a computer system that would allow users to remotely — and almost instantaneously — search large collections of scientific and technical literature.

Instead of visiting a library and rifling through card catalogs, researchers would be able to type their queries into a computer and, like magic, a list of the documents they needed would appear on their screens.

“I saw the potential for computer-based information-retrieval systems ultimately changing the nature of research,” Mr. Summit recalled in 2019. “After all, what good is knowledge if you cannot find it?”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/technology/roger-summit-dead.html