Public-domain ebook
by Marie Lebert
Language: en1,035 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: History - Modern (1750+)·Encyclopedias/Dictionaries/Reference
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #27039.
The work is a chronicle of a digital‑library experiment that began in July 1971, when Michael Hart typed the United States Declaration of Independence onto a university mainframe and shared the file with a handful of early network users. From that modest start, the narrative tracks the project’s growth through the 1970s and 1980s, its embrace of the emerging World Wide Web in the mid‑1990s, and the steady acceleration of e‑text production, reaching 5 000 titles by 2002, 10 000 by 2003, and 15 000 by early 2005. It details the volunteer‑driven processes of typing, scanning, proofreading, and formatting, the division of the collection into “Light,” “Heavy,” and “Reference” literature, and the expansion into multiple languages and continents. The opening passages set a factual, data‑rich tone, offering a timeline of milestones rather than a conventional plot.
Written in a straightforward, report‑like style, the text reflects the informational voice of the early internet era, with a focus on statistics, dates, and institutional goals. Its plain‑vanilla ASCII presentation mirrors the technical constraints of its time, while the meticulous enumeration of achievements appeals to readers interested in the history of digital publishing, library science, or the evolution of collaborative online projects. Those who enjoy factual narratives, technological retrospectives, or the behind‑the‑scenes story of how a volunteer network built one of the first massive e‑book collections will find this account engaging.
The opening · free to read
My fascination for Project Gutenberg is not new, but it doesn't wane. Nobody has done a better job of putting the world's literature at everyone's disposal. And to create a vast network of volunteers all over the world, without wasting people's skills or energy.
Here is the story in a few lines.
In July 1971, Michael Hart created Project Gutenberg with the goal of making available for free, and electronically, literary works belonging to the public domain. A project that has long been considered by its critics as impossible on a large scale. A pioneer site in a number of ways, Project Gutenberg was the first information provider on the internet and is the oldest digital library. Michael himself keyed in the first hundred books.
When the internet became popular, in the mid-1990s, the project got a boost and an international dimension. Michael still typed and scanned in books, but now coordinated the work of dozens and then hundreds of volunteers in many countries. The number of electronic books rose from 1,000 (in August 1997) to 2,000 (in May 1999), 3,000 (in December 2000) and 4,000 (in October 2001).
30 years after its birth, Project Gutenberg is running at full capacity. It had 5,000 books online in April 2002, 10,000 books online in October 2003, and 15,000 books online in January 2005, with 400 new books available per month, 40 mirror sites in a number of countries, and books downloaded by the tens of thousands every day.
Whether they were digitized 20 years ago or they are digitized now, all the books are captured in Plain Vanilla ASCII (the original 7-bit ASCII), with the same formatting rules, so they can be read easily by any machine, operating system or software, including on a PDA or an eBook reader. Any individual or organization is free to convert them to different formats, without any restriction except respect for copyright laws in the country involved.
In January 2004, Project Gutenberg had spread across the Atlantic with the creation of Project Gutenberg Europe. On top of its original mission, it also became a bridge between languages and cultures, with a goal of one million eBooks in 2015, and a number of national and linguistic sections. While adhering to the same principle: books for all and for free, through electronic versions that can be used and reproduced indefinitely. And, as a second step, the digitization of images and sound, in the same spirit.
Let us get back to the beginnings of the project. When he was a student at the University of Illinois (USA), Michael Hart was given $100,000,000 of computer time at the Materials Research Lab of his university. On July 4, 1971, on Independence Day, Michael keyed in The United States Declaration of Independence (signed on July 4, 1776) to the mainframe he was using. In upper case, because there was no lower case yet. But to send a 5 K file to the 100 users of the embryonic internet would have crashed the network. So Michael mentioned where the eText was stored (though without a hypertext link, because the web was still 20 years ahead). It was downloaded by six users. Project Gutenberg was born.
Michael decided to use this huge amount of computer time to search the public domain books that were stored in our libraries, and to digitize these books. He also decided to store the electronic texts (eTexts) in the simplest way, using the plain text format called Plain Vanilla ASCII, so they can be read easily by any machine, operating system or software. A book would become a continuous text file instead of a set of pages, with caps for the terms in italic, bold or underlined of the print version.
Soon afterwards he defined Project Gutenberg's mission: to put at everyone's disposal, in electronic versions, as many literary works of the public domain as possible for free. As he stated years later, in August 1998, "We consider eText to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper, other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way to eTexts, especially in schools."
After he keyed in The United States Declaration of Independence in 1971, Michael went on in 1972 and typed in a longer text, The United States Bill of Rights, that includes the ten first amendments added in 1789 to the Constitution (dated 1787) and defining the individual rights of the citizens and the distinct powers ot the Federal Government and the States. In 1973, Michael typed in the full text of The United States Constitution.
From one year to the next, disk space was getting larger, by the standards of the time (there was no hard disk yet), so it was possible to plan bigger files. Michael began typing in the Bible, because the individual books of the Bible could be processed separately as different files. He also worked on the collected works of Shakespeare, with one play at a time, and a file for each play. That edition of Shakespeare was never released, due to copyright changes. If Shakespeare's works belong to the public domain, the comments and notes may be copyrighted, depending on the publication date. But other editions belonging to the public domain were posted a few years later.
In parallel, the internet, which was still embryonic in 1971, was born in 1974 with the launching of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). Its rapid expansion started in 1983.
In August 1989, Project Gutenberg celebrated the completion of its 10th eText, The King James Bible.
In 1990, there were 250,000 internet users, and the standard was 360 K disks. In January 1991, Michael keyed in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (published in 1865). In July 1991, he typed in Peter Pan, by James M. Barrie (published in 1904). These two worldwide classics of childhood literature each fitted on one disk.
1991 was also the year the web became operational. The first browser, Mosaic, was released in November 1993. As the web was becoming a popular medium, it became easier to circulate eTexts and recruit volunteers. Project Gutenberg gradually got into its stride, with the digitization of one eText per month in 1991, two eTexts per month in 1992, four eTexts per month in 1993 and eight eTexts per month in 1994. In January 1994, Project Gutenberg celebrated its 100th eText by releasing The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The steady growth went on, with an average of 8 eTexts per month in 1994, 16 eTexts per month in 1995, and 32 eTexts per month in 1996.
As we can see, from 1991 to 1996, the "output" doubled every year. While continuing to digitize books, Michael was also coordinating the work of dozens of volunteers. At the end of 1993, Project Gutenberg's eTexts were organized into three main sections: a) "Light Literature", such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan or Aesop's Fables; b) "Heavy Literature", such as the Bible, Shakespeare's works or Moby Dick; c) "Reference Literature", such as Roget's Thesaurus, and a set of encyclopaedias and dictionaries.
Project Gutenberg's goal is to be "universal" both for the literary works that are chosen and the audience who reads them. The goal is to put literature at everyone's disposal. With a focus on books that many people would use frequently, and not only students and teachers. For example, the "Light Literature" section is intended for pre-schoolers as well as their grandparents. The aim is that they will want to look up the eText of Peter Pan when they come back from watching Hook at the movies. Or that they will read the eText of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland after seeing it on TV. Or that they will look for the context of a quotation after hearing it in one of the Star Trek episodes; nearly every episode of Star Trek quotes from books which are in the Project Gutenberg collections.
The idea is that, whether they were avid readers of print books or not in the past, people should easily be able to look up quotations they hear in conversations, movies, music, or they read in books, newspapers and magazines, within a library containing all these quotations in an easy-to-use format. eTexts don't take up much space in ASCII format. They can be easily downloaded with a standard phone line. Searching a word or a phrase is simple too. People can easily search an entire eText by using the plain "search" menu available in any program."
In 1997, the "output" was still an average of 32 eTexts per month. In June 1997, Project Gutenberg released The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle (published in 1883). In August 1997, it released its 1000th eText, La Divina Commedia di Dante (published in 1321), in Italian, its original language.
In August 1998, Michael wrote: "My own personal goal is to put 10,000 eTexts on the Net [editor's note: his goal was reached in October 2003] and if I can get some major support, I would like to expand that to 1,000,000 and to also expand our potential audience for the average eText from 1.x% of the world population to over 10%, thus changing our goal from giving away 1,000,000,000,000 eTexts to 1,000 times as many, a trillion and a quadrillion in US terminology."
= 1,000 to 5,000 eBooks from 1998 to 2002
From 1998 to 2000, there was a steadfast average of 36 new eTexts per month. In May 1999, there were 2,000 eTexts. The 2000th eText was Don Quijote, by Cervantes (published in 1605), in Spanish, its original language.
Around 40 eTexts per month were released during the 1st semester 2001, and 50 eTexts during the 2nd semester. Released in December 2000, the 3000th eText was the third volume of A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower), by Marcel Proust (published in 1919), in French, its original language.
Released in October 2001, the 4000th eText was The French Immortals Series, in English. Published in 1905 by Maison Mazarin, Paris, this book is an anthology of short fictions by authors belonging to the renowned French Academy (Académie française), notably Emile Souvestre, Pierre Loti, Hector Malot, Charles de Bernard and Alphonse Daudet.
Available in April 2002, the 5000th eText was The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, which he wrote at the beginning of the 16th century. A text that is still in the Top 100 of downloaded texts in 2005.
In 1988, Michael Hart chose to digitize Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Peter Pan because they each fitted on one 360 K disk, the standard of the time. Fifteen years later, in 2002, 1.44 M is the standard disk and ZIP is the standard compression. The practical file size is about 3 million characters, more than long enough for the average book. The digitized ASCII version of a 300-page novel is 1 M. A bulky book can fit in two ASCII files, that can be downloaded as is or in ZIP format.
An average of 50 hours is necessary to get an eText selected, copyright-cleared, scanned, proofread, formatted and assembled.
A few numbers are reserved for "special" books. For example, eText number 1984 is reserved for George Orwell's classic, published in 1949, and still a long way from falling into the public domain.
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