Edward G. Brisch

[2] By now married, in 1934 he established an engineering consultancy in Warsaw, transferring soon afterwards to Paris,[1] where he did some work for the British Army’s armoured vehicle operations.

Unable to return to Paris, Brisch was urged by the British War Office and Vickers Ltd to come to England, but that journey proved extremely difficult.

[3] He left Riga in June 1941, scarcely a month before the German occupation, reaching Rangoon (by way of Chungking, wartime capital of China) in August 1941.

[4] He arrived in England with a lung ailment, contracted in Burma, and underwent an immediate pneumonectomy, but this left him prone to infections for the rest of his life.

[7] The uniqueness of the idea lies in the nomination of a primary code (typically within nine main headings 00-80) attached to every ‘part’, based on its essential features (shape and dimension).

A further, secondary, code (based on 81 two-digit numbers, representing concepts, which are divided, and can be used in any conjunction) is then bonded to the parent, determined by its process features (e.g. machining operation).

In 1955 Brisch published a paper on his classification in the newly established journal of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, ASLIB Proceedings.