the library!

Alexandria is most famous for having been the site of the ancient library...Back in the days when people moved to information, instead of vice versa, this library attracted most of the most famous smart people in the world: the ultimate hacker, Archimedes;  the father of geometry, Euclid; Eratosthenes, who was the first person to calculate the circumference of the earth, by looking at the way the sun shone down wells at Alexandria and Aswan.  He also ran the library for a while and took the job seriously enough that when he started to go blind in his old age, he starved himself to death.  In any event, this library was burned out by the Romans when they were adding Egypt to their empire.  Or maybe it wasn't.  It's inherently difficult to get reliable information about an event that consisted of the destruction of all recorded information.

Neal Stephenson from the article "Mother Earth, Mother Board,"

 from Some Remarks:  Essays and Other Writing

you can read the full wired article here:  

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html