Book People Archive

Re: !@[redacted] Re: Early ebook history info wanted; "Alice"; Brown Corpus; Vannevar Bush; Asimov

Michael Hart wrote:
> Jon Noring wrote:
>> Michael Hart wrote:

Thanks! Very informative reply, and, in my opinion, full of good
historical information. Read my note at the end.


>>> I am currently writing "A Brief History of eBooks," that should
>>> answer many of these queries, and more, and will post it here.

>> Michael, it would be marvelous for you to document in more detail the
>> pre-1990 era of your work!

> It's one thing to DO the work, totally another to document it.
>
> You have to realize that for the first 17 years absolutely NO ONE
> paid any attention, even the friends that helped me thot I was nuts,
> and that it would never work. . .just helped because I was their friend.
>
> Thus there wasn't really any audience to document for.

That's the problem -- your vision was bigger than the technology
was capable of delivering -- until quite recently.


> I am going through the same thing with PGEu right now,
> trying to write up a short history for them, and I was
> there when it started, literally in Europe with them,
> but it's like pulling teeth. . . .

Well, I think it is important to document the history. It is tough...

My favorite class in college was the "History of Technology" class,
so I've always had an interest in the topic of technology and
history.


>> That is what is missing from all the bios
>> of you I've read, such as that in the Wikipedia.

> I thot about writing something for them,
> but I don't worry about that sort of thing a lot,
> unless it is waved right under my nose.
>
> However I do have a call in to the person who gave
> me that first account on July 4, 1971, he finally
> showed up on my Google searches, but he's on the road.

Great! I think many of us would love to hear his side of the event.
Even though I've provided my own perspective on the relevance of
the event as different than yours, it is nevertheless an important
event (to you and to what led to PG), the details of which should be
preserved in the historical record.


> And I am still in contact with one other who was there.
> I'm not sure how much they will remember, though.

One never knows. They hopefully will remember something.


>> In essence, almost nothing is given about the 1971 to 1990 time
>> frame -- only some vague generalities.

> That's because the progress was pretty vague.
>
> Some of the work was done on ux1.cso.uiuc.edu,
> vmd.cso.uiuc.edu and vme.cso.uiuc.edu.

Understood. Your bios do say that technology had not yet really
developed to the minimum level required to make your vision a
reality.


>> Once you do, I hope you will consider posting it to the ebook-history
>> group at YahooGroups. Since ebook-history is being mirrored at Google,
>> it will also appear in Google searches.

> I'll leave that to others. . .I'll put it on at least one of these
> lists and on my blog.

Do you have a blog in the usual sense, or is that your weekly
newsletter?


> The Millennium Fulcrum

What is the genesis of this name? Is it a takeoff of the Star Wars
"Millenium Falcon"? Or something else?


>>   What were you doing at the moment you thought of that name?

> THAT I can remember. . .I was sitting only a few feet from where
> I am right now, on a mattress on the floor, it's still there,
> and I wrote out a LOT of names, including Project Alexandria,
> on one of those huge old printouts. . .a few feet of names.
>
> But the truth is that I could have stopped when I first wrote
> Project Gutenberg, I knew it was the one. . .but I had to be
> absolutely sure, so I still kept on making a long list.
>
> This was after Sept 1, 1985, as that was when I moved here.
>
> I would guess it was Sept of 1988 or 1989.
>
> I think I still have email from 1988, so that's best guess.

Great! If you find the email, the date would be significant. I
believe those who have volunteered for many years in PG are
interested in the events which spawned the name, and when.


>>   As I've noted before, the first documented mention of PG I can find
>>   is 20 December 1989. This doesn't mean this is the first time, but
>>   that's all I can find documented in the Google groups (which
>>   includes a lot of early Bitnet lists.)

> We started a little Project Gutenberg listserver when I made up the name,
> that's why I made it up. . .that that was from the Micro Resources Center
> in the basement of the Illini Union at the U of Illinois [uiuc].
>
> It ended up on mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu
>
> The first NeXT machine at uiuc, I helped put it together the day it came.

I don't know, but I'm always interested in the origin of names used by
projects, just as I am in genealogy. There is a significance to names.


> but I don't recall if that's where it started from in that center.
>
> Later it ended up on my own NeXT machine that I talked Jobs out of:
>
> jg.cso.uiuc.edu
>
> Searching for those addresses might give you some additional hits.

Hmmm, thanks. Will hunt and see if anything results....

(Hunted on Google groups for a reference to that subdomain, but
found nothing before 1995. You probably decided to use that domain
in 1995 for something which would have been recorded in Google.)


>> 2) The date when you digitized "Alice" and posted it to the local BBS
>>   is actually very important. You mentioned in a gutvol-d post that
>>   it was sometime after September 1984 (or 1985, not clear from what
>>   you wrote.) It would be really nice to find an actual copy. Was the
>>   content of that BBS ever archived? Or is it long-gone? Was that
>>   copy of Alice reposted on other BBS? (textfiles.com does not have
>>   it.)

> That was a floppy driven BBS that I am sure bit the dust soon after.

Too bad. Do you know if the content was copied over to other BBS?


> I ran it for about 18 months, on CP/M, but then went to MS-DOS
> when I built a grey market IBM of all genuine IBM parts.
>
> I still have that machine, and jg.cso.uiuc.edu and even perhaps
> the very same TeleType machine I typed the Declaration on. . . .

Well, no one can say you aren't frugal. :^)


> As for when I did Alice. . .everyone disagrees. . . .
>
> Newby says he first heard of me when he downloaded it in 1985-86,
> but I would have said 88, so go figure. . . .
>
> People downloaded a LOT of stuff from the CCCC BBS, and I put up
> all I could, so it would have been there if I did it.
>
> My own recollection would have been Sept 1985 at the earliest,
> from this desk where I am sitting now, but more likely 1988,
> but Newby swears it was 85-86, so who knows.

I'd say it is possible. You said you ran the Champaign BBS in 1984
and 1985, and believed the text was done at that time. If Greg
believes he saw it in the 1985-86 time frame, then that's probably
right. So I'd accept Sept. 1985 as a likely date for the first
transcription of Alice. You might recall other events at the time
that can help date it. Or, see a hypnotist. :^)

In any event, I'm hoping others will step forward and provide more
info, or even more importantly, dig up the original file.


>>> 6.  There were at least a few comments to the effect that there
>>> was an obvious effort being made to "write me out" of a history
>>> of eBooks as much as possible, and I will address those later.

>> Michael, your role in the ebook history book is definitely major!

> My real goal was just to prove eBooks were feasible and get them
> flying out of the nest. . .but you've seen how I keep setting my
> goals higher and higher.
>
> You'd be surprised at what they are for the next 3.5 years!

Definitely.


>> From my perspective, your greatest contribution is your bulldog
>> public advocacy and lead role to develop an enduring (and evolving )
>> volunteer network to massively digitize the public domain so it is
>> freely available to everyone everywhere.

> Whoda thunk I'd keep at it for 20 years with minimal interest,
> until it finally caught on?

Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes: There's a time and place for everything
under the sun -- nothing can happen before its time.

I've been dreaming of large solar plants in the U.S. deserts since I
graduated from high school in 1973 (and even worked on the Solar One
plant in Barstow for a while), and yet that dream has not yet been
fulfilled. I'm still keeping on top of this and do consulting in this
area (something few people in ebookdom know...)


>> It sounds more specific than something like "inventor of ebooks",

> I suppose it all depends on who writes the history in what words.

Sure.


> I think I was definitely the first person to put something in a
> computer that was designed to become the first step of eLibraries.
>
> I seriously doubt if anyone tried to put something permanent on
> the Net before July 4, 1971. . .I never talked to anyone back then
> who even GOT the idea of the Net. . . .
>
> Somehow the very first time I ever heard of it, there at the
> Xerox Sigma V in the Materials Research Lab, I knew what it
> was going to be, though I didn't think much in terms of the
> graphics and music of today. . .just the information exchange.
>
> I told people that computers would be used more for exchange
> of information than for computing sub-orbital trajectories,
> and they thot I was nuts.
>
> A search on "than for computing sub-orbital trejectories"
> might get you some of my older emails.

Nope. Nothing found for the string "computing sub-orbital trajectories"
(and "trejectories") in Google. :^(


>> but in my book is definitely much more important since it directly
>> benefits the general welfare of humanity, and that is what you will be
>> remembered for. Technology innovations are a dime a dozen -- it is
>> what is done with technology that is the really important thing.

> As always, I was trying something interdisciplinary. . .not just the
> technology. . .not just the eLibrary. . .but something that would
> lead to The Neo-Industrial Revolution. . .a Star Trek Replicator,
> which didn't even exist yet, at least outside Roddenberry's mind.
>
> And I did talk about laptop computers and carrying the entire
> Library of Congress in one hand that day. . .and that they would
> pass a law against it.
>
> As for Vannevar Bush, I hadn't heard of him or Ted Nelson,
> and I don't recall anything like this from Asimov, other
> than that he kept my Dad's first edition of "I, Robot."
>
> ;-)

Well, hopefully the stuff I dig up will be interesting to everyone.

*****

The important thing, despite Michael's and my major differences in
various matters -- which sometimes get to be pretty heated and
emotional (we view the world in quite different ways) -- is that I
still greatly respect and admire him for what he has accomplished in
founding PG and in elevating the importance of the Public Domain for
all of us.

Before Michael came along, I never thought of the Public Domain as
needing to be cherished, protected, preserved, expanded, and made
universally available. I was just the ordinary Joe (or Jon) who went
along with the flow.

We can argue about who invented what, we can argue about the best
way to digitize the Public Domain, we can argue about organizational
and governance issues, etc., but the contribution Michael Hart has
made to promoting and digitizing the Public Domain is greater, in my
opinion, than such mundane matters as who invented what.

And that is what Michael will go down in history for.


Jon Noring