A schemaless computer database in 1965 by Bob DuCharme.
From the post:
To enable flexible metadata aggregation, among other things.
I’ve been reading up on America’s post-war attempt to keep up the accelerated pace of R&D that began during World War II. This effort led to an infrastructure that made accomplishments such as the moon landing and the Internet possible; it also led to some very dry literature, and I’m mostly interested in what new metadata-related techniques were developed to track and share the products of the research as they led to development.
… (emphasis in original)
I won’t spoil the surprise. Go read Bob’s post to see the answer.
His post does prompt me to ask: What early computing “dry” literature have you read lately?