Michael S. Hart

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Michael Stern Hart (b. 1947 in Tacoma, Washington) is an American best known as the founder of Project Gutenberg which makes electronic books freely available via the Internet. At least one version of each book is a plain text file that can be displayed on virtually any computer. Most of the early postings were typed in personally by himself. Today, the e-texts are produced (usually scanned) by Project Gutenberg's many volunteers. The collection includes public domain works and copyrighted works included with express permission.

1 Early life
2 Birth of the project
3 The writer
4 References
5 External links
- 5.1 Selected interviews

[edit] Early life

Michael Hart's father was an accountant and his mother, a former cryptanalyst during World War II, was a business manager at a retail store. In 1958 his family relocated to Urbana, Illinois, and his father and mother became college professors in Shakespearean studies and mathematics education, respectively. Hart attended the University of Illinois, graduating in just two years.^[1] He then attended but did not complete graduate school.

[edit] Birth of the project

During Hart's time there, the University of Illinois computer center gave Hart a user's account on its computer system. (Hart's brother's best friend was the mainframe operator.[1]) Although the focus of computer use there tended to be data processing, Hart was aware that it was connected to a network (part of what would become the Internet) and chose also to use his computer time for information distribution. Hart related that after his account was created on July 4, 1971, he had been trying to think of what to do with it and had seized upon a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, which he had been given at a grocery store on his way home from watching fireworks that evening. He typed the text into a teletype machine but was unable to transmit it via e-mail. Thus, to avoid "crashing the system", it had to be downloaded individually.

This was the beginning of Project Gutenberg. Hart began posting text copies of such classics as the Bible, the works of Homer, Shakespeare, and Mark Twain. As of 1987 he had typed in a total of 313 books in this fashion. Then, through being involved in the University of Illinois PC User Group and with assistance from Mark Zinzow, a programmer at the school, Hart was able to recruit volunteers and set up an infrastructure of mirror sites and mailing lists for the project. With this the project was able to grow much more rapidly.