The service began as a print publication in 1926, when it was formed by the union of Abstracts of Bacteriology (1917–1925), and Botanical Abstracts (1919–1926), both published in Baltimore by Williams and Wilkins.[4] It was published in paperback subject sections, with abstracts usually written by scientists in the US, as a great many articles from that period were in other languages. At the time of founding, it was in competition with the classified indexing service of the Concilium Bibliographicum in Zurich.[5][6][7][8]
The first online version was published on magnetic tape; it contained only the bibliographic information, not the text of the abstracts, and was intended as a rapid alerting service.[definition needed]
^Burke, Colin B. (2014). Information and Intrigue: From Index Cards to Dewey Decimals to Alger Hiss. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 166–168, 235–237. ISBN978-0-262-02702-1.