One of the earliest digital humanities pioneers was Father Roberto Busa, S.J. (1913-2011). In his 1946 doctoral dissertation, Busa announced the need for a machine-generated Thomas Aquinas concordance. Why machine-generated? Because Aquinas’ works contain over 9 million words. Cross referencing those words, not to mention connecting them with the many works to which Aquinas refers, would take many a human lifetime. Busa began working on the concordance, known as the Index Thomisticus, in 1949 and by 1951 he had a proof of concept machine. Being that it was the 1950s, it used punch cards. Today it exists online. The Index Thomisticus was a monumental undertaking not just because of what it took to create it but also because of what inspired it. Father Busa noticed Aquinas’ unique use of a particular word and knew a machine was required to investigate further. The word was “in.” (Originally from Blog add citation)