Editing Samuel Hartlib (section)

=="Intelligencer"==
Hartlib is often described as an "[[wikt:intelligencer|intelligencer]]", and indeed has been called "the Great Intelligencer of Europe".<ref>Arved Hübler, Peter Linde and John W. T. Smith, ''Electronic Publishing '01: 2001 in the Digital Publishing Odyssey'' (IOS Press, 2001). {{ISBN|1-58603-191-0}}</ref> His main aim in life was to further knowledge. He kept in touch with an array of contacts from high philosophers to gentleman farmers. He maintained a voluminous correspondence, lost in 1667, but much recovered since 1945;<ref>[[Hugh Trevor-Roper]], ''From Counter-Reformation to Glorious Revolution'' (1992), p. 227.</ref> it is housed in a special Hartlib collection at the [[University of Sheffield]], England.

Hartlib became one of the best-connected intellectual figures of the [[Commonwealth of England|Commonwealth]] era. He was responsible for patents, spreading information and fostering learning. He circulated designs for calculators, double-writing instruments, seed machines and siege engines. His letters in German, Latin, English and other languages have been subjected to close modern scholarship.

Hartlib set out with a universalist goal: "to record all human knowledge and to make it universally available for the education of all mankind".<ref>[http://hridigital.shef.ac.uk/hartlib The Hartlib Papers Project – University of Sheffield]</ref> His work has been compared to modern internet search engines.<ref>[http://adressbueros.tantner.net/projekt.html Eine Vorgeschichte der Internet-Suchmaschine].</ref>