Book People Archive

Project Gutenberg, The Online Books Page, and the Internet

Jose Menendez has a long post noting that the Xerox Sigma V Michael
Hart recalls using at UIUC apparently was not on the ARPANET (the
originator of the Internet) in the summer of 1971, and that this
poses problems for the Project Gutenberg anniversary story.

It may indeed contractict some of the details in accounts of
Gutenberg's origins, and I appreciate having folks around that
try to meticulously track down facts about interesting historic events.

At the same time, I'll note that The Online Books Page wasn't "on the
Internet" when it started either.  The event that marked its start, by my
reckoning, was my posting the first version of the Web page dedicated
to hyperlinks to books online.   That occurred after we made the Web browser
Mosaic available at CMU, but before we put up our first HTTP server.  In that
interval, which lasted at least a couple of months, the page, and the rest of
our department's web, was only available via the campuswide filesystem.
But that was enough to make it visible to other folks at CMU, and
once the HTTP server was up, it was also usable worldwide.

Unfortunately, I don't know the exact date I started the page.  Although that
was only 13 years ago and not 35, I didn't record exactly what I was
doing at the time, my memory has faded somewhat, and I doubt CMU has
backup tapes going back that far.  If someone asked me for a date
for an Online Books Page birthday party, I'd have to pick an arbitrary date
in the late spring or early summer.  Being usually particular about facts,
I'd make sure to mention that it was an imprecise date, but it'd still
probably tend to stick after a while, in the way that December 25 sticks
for Jesus' birthday and July 4 sticks for the birthday of the US.
(See http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2005/nr05-83.html
for why that latter date isn't as historically significant as many
people think.)

My understanding, though, is that about 35 years ago, Michael Hart
digitized a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and distributed
it via the shared computer resources he had access to, and that
afterwards, he kept trying to make this and other literature available
online as widely as he could.  His accounts of the exact details of what
happened might not be fully accurate-- which would not be unusual for
autobiographical reminiscences--  but that initial communication still
marks an important milestone in the development of online books and
Project Gutenberg. (Gutenberg in the form we know it today-- that is,
an essentially Internet-based group of volunteers collaborating to put
texts online under the "Project Gutenberg" name-- would get going much
later, in the late 1908s if I remember rightly,)  The main project, and its
affiliates in Australia and in Europe, now have cataloged and released
approximately 20,000 titles of various types and sizes.

Michael may well already be off on his travels, but I'd like to wish
him a happy 35th anniversary, whenever he happens to read this.

John