Definition of breadcrumbs

The term "breadcrumbs" was coined in the 1940s by computer scientist Vannevar Bush, who used it in a science fiction essay titled "As We May Think" to describe a hypothetical information management system. Bush's visionary essay proposed an " membrane with a hundred thousand tiny pressure-sensitive elements" which would allow users to manipulate and explore complex information networks. He described this system as a "system [that] is neither exactly speech nor exactly writing; neither exact logic nor exact association; we want to both classify and substantiate." Bush went on to suggest that this system should include a "trail blazing" feature, where a user could mark their path through the network with a series of virtual breadcrumbs, allowing them to easily find their way back to the starting point. The metaphor of breadcrumbs comes from the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel", in which the two children leave a trail of breadcrumbs to follow home through the woods. Just as the characters in the story mark their path with breadcrumbs, users in Bush's system left a trail of virtual breadcrumbs to help them navigate complex information networks. The term has since been borrowed by software designers and programmers to refer to the visual indication of a user's trail through a webpage or application, making it easier to backtrack and find one's way back to a previous location. In summary, the term "breadcrumbs" originated in the 1940s as a metaphor for a hypothetical information management system proposed by Vannevar Bush, and has since been adopted by software designers to indicate the user's trail through a digital interface.