Andre Yoskowitz
9 Sep 2011 0:35
Michael Hart, the man behind starting Project Gutenberg forty years ago, has passed this week at age 64.
Hart is regarded as a pioneer of the ebook industry.
Starting on July 4th, 1971, Hart began digitizing the U.S. Declaration of Independence to a Xerox Sigma V mainframe in the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois.
After the DOI, Hart moved on to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and eventually Shakespeare. The Project now has 40,000 digitized books.
Said Hart in 1992:
The premise of Project Gutenberg was: anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely.Once a book or any other item (including pictures, sounds, and even 3-D items can be stored in a computer), then any number of copies can and will be available. Everyone in the world, or even not in this world (given satellite transmission) can have a copy of a book that has been entered into a computer.