Public-domain ebook
by Marie Lebert
Language: en1,067 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: History - Other·History - Modern (1750+)·Journalism/Media/Writing
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #31632.
The work is a chronicle of the digital‑library venture that began in July 1971, when Michael Hart, a freshman at the University of Illinois, logged onto a mainframe and typed the U.S. Declaration of Independence as the first e‑text. From that modest start the narrative traces the project’s evolution, its early reliance on volunteers, the boost provided by the World Wide Web in 1990, and the launch of Distributed Proofreaders in 2000, through milestones such as reaching 1,000 ebooks in 1997, 10,000 in 2003, and 20,000 by the end of 2006. The opening passages blend factual milestones with Hart’s personal recollections, offering a detailed timeline of how a handful of ASCII files grew into a global repository of literature, legal documents, and reference works.
Written in a straightforward, documentary style, the text reflects the earnest, tech‑savvy optimism of the late‑20th‑century information age. Its voice is factual rather than literary, peppered with dates, statistics, and direct quotations from Hart’s interviews. Readers who enjoy histories of computing, grassroots digital‑culture movements, or the behind‑the‑scenes story of how today’s online libraries were built will find this account both informative and inspiring.
The opening · free to read
As recalled by Michael Hart in January 2009 in an email interview: "On July 4, 1971, while still a freshman at the University of Illinois (UI), I decided to spend the night at the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the UI Materials Research Lab, rather than walk miles home in the summer heat, only to come back hours later to start another day of school. I stopped on the way to do a little grocery shopping to get through the night, and day, and along with the groceries they put in the faux parchment copy of 'The U.S. Declaration of Independence' that became quite literally the cornerstone of Project Gutenberg. That night, as it turned out, I received my first computer account--I had been hitchhiking on my brother's best friend's name, who ran the computer on the night shift. When I got a first look at the huge amount of computer money I was given, I decided I had to do something extremely worthwhile to do justice to what I had been given. This was such a serious, and intense thought process for a college freshman, my first thought was that I had better eat something to get up enough energy to think of something worthwhile enough to repay the cost of all that computer time. As I emptied out groceries, the faux parchment Declaration of Independence fell out, and the light literally went on over my head like in the cartoons and comics... I knew what the future of computing, and the internet, was going to be... 'The Information Age.' The rest, as they say, is history."
Michael decided to search the books from public domain available in our libraries, digitize these books, and store the electronic books (ebooks) in the simplest way, using the low set of ASCII--called Plain Vanilla ASCII--for them to be read on any hardware and 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. As a text file, a book would be easily copied, indexed, searched, analyzed and compared with other books. (Doing such searches is much harder in various markup formats.)
Project Gutenberg's mission would be the following: to put at everyone's disposal, in electronic versions, as many literary works from public domain as possible for free. Years later, in August 1998, Michael wrote in an email interview: "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 keying in "The U.S. Declaration of Independence" in 1971, Michael typed in "The U.S. Bill of Rights" in 1972. A volunteer typed in "The United States Constitution" in 1973.
From one year to the next, disk space was getting larger, by the standards of the time--there was no hard disk yet--, making it possible to store larger files. Volunteers began typing in the Bible, with one individual book at a time, and a file for each book. Michael typed in the collected works of Shakespeare, with the help of volunteers, one play at a time, and a file for each play. This edition of Shakespeare was never released, unfortunately, due to changes in copyright law. Shakespeare's works belong to public domain, but comments and notes may be copyrighted, depending on the publication date. Other editions of Shakespeare from public domain were posted a few years later.
In August 1989, Project Gutenberg completed its 10th ebook, "The King James Bible" (1769), both testaments, and 5 M for all files.
In 1990, there were 250,000 internet users. The web was in its infancy. The standard was 360 K disks.
In January 1991, Michael typed in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865), by Lewis Carroll. In July 1991, he typed in "Peter Pan" (1904), by James M. Barrie. These two classics of childhood literature each fit on one disk.
The first browser, Mosaic, was released in November 1993. It became easier to circulate etexts and recruit volunteers. From 1991 to 1996, the number of ebooks doubled every year, with one book per month in 1991, two books per month in 1992, four books per month in 1993, and eight books per month in 1994.
In January 1994, Project Gutenberg released "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" as eBook #100. Shakespeare wrote most works between 1590 and 1613.
The steady growth went on, with an average of 8 books per month in 1994, 16 books per month in 1995, and 32 books per month in 1996.
In June 1997, Project Gutenberg released "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" (1883), by Howard Pyle.
Project Gutenberg had 1,000 ebooks in August 1997. eBook #1000 was "La Divina Commedia" de Dante Alighieri (1321), in Italian, its original language.
As there were more and more ebooks, they got classified in three main sections: (a) "Light Literature", such as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", "Through the Looking-Glass", "Peter Pan" and "Aesop's Fables"; (b) "Heavy Literature", such as the Bible, Shakespeare's works, "Moby Dick" and "Paradise Lost"; (c) "Reference Literature", such as "Roget's Thesaurus", almanacs, and a set of encyclopedias and dictionaries. (This classification in three sections was replaced later with a more detailed one.)
"Light Literature" was the main section in number of ebooks. As explained on the website in 1998, "The Light Literature Collection is designed to get persons to the computer in the first place, whether the person may be a pre-schooler or a great-grandparent. We love it when we hear about kids or grandparents taking each other to an etext of 'Peter Pan' when they come back from watching Hook at the movies, or when they read 'Alice in Wonderland' after seeing it on TV. We have also been told that nearly every Star Trek movie has quoted current Project Gutenberg etext releases (from 'Moby Dick' in 'The Wrath of Khan'; a Peter Pan quote finishing up the most recent, etc.) not to mention a reference to 'Through the Looking-Glass' in JFK. This was a primary concern when we chose the books for our libraries. We want people to be able to look up quotations they heard in conversation, movies, music, other books, easily with a library containing all these quotations in an easy-to-find etext format."
Project Gutenberg has selected books intended for the general public. It has not focused on providing authoritative editions. "We do not write for the reader who cares whether a certain phrase in Shakespeare has a ':' or a ';' between its clauses. We put our sights on a goal to release etexts that are 99.9% accurate in the eyes of the general reader. Given the preferences our proofreaders have, and the general lack of reading ability the public is currently reported to have, we probably exceed those requirements by a significant amount. However, for the person who wants an 'authoritative edition' we will have to wait some time until this becomes more feasible. We do, however, intend to release many editions of Shakespeare and the other classics for comparative study on a scholarly level."
In August 1998, Michael Hart wrote in an email interview: "My own personal goal is to put 10,000 etexts on the net [this 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 U.S. terminology."
Project Gutenberg reached 2,000 ebooks in May 1999. eBook #2000 was "Don Quijote" (1605), by Cervantes, in Spanish, its original language.
Project Gutenberg reached 3,000 ebooks in December 2000. eBook #3000 was "A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs" (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower), vol. 3 (1919), by Marcel Proust, in French, its original language.
Project Gutenberg reached 4,000 ebooks in October 2001. eBook #4000 was "The French Immortals Series" (1905), in English. This book is an anthology of short fictions by authors from the French Academy (Academie francaise): Emile Souvestre, Pierre Loti, Hector Malot, Charles de Bernard, Alphonse Daudet, and others.
Project Gutenberg reached 5,000 ebooks in April 2002. eBook #5000 was "The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci" (early 16th century). Since its release, this ebook has stayed in the Top 100 of downloaded books.
In 1988, Michael Hart chose to type in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan" because they would each fit on one 360 K disk, the standard of the time. In 2002, the standard disk was 1.44 M and could be compressed as a ZIP file.
A practical file size is about 3 million characters, more than long enough for the average book. The 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 ebook selected, copyright-cleared, scanned, proofread, formatted and assembled.
A few numbers are reserved for "special" books. For example, eBook #1984 is reserved for George Orwell's classic, published in 1949, and still a long way from falling into public domain.
The "output" in 2001 and 2002 was an average of 100 books per month.
In spring 2002, Project Gutenberg's ebooks represented 25% of all the public domain works freely available on the web, an impressive result if we think of all the pages that were scanned and proofread by thousands of volunteers in several countries.
1,000 ebooks in August 1997, 2,000 ebooks in May 1999, 3,000 ebooks in December 2000, 4,000 ebooks in October 2001, 5,000 ebooks in April 2002, 10,000 ebooks in October 2003. eBook #10000 was The Magna Carta, signed in 1215 and known as the first English constitutional text.
From April 2002 to October 2003, in 18 months, the collections doubled, going from 5,000 ebooks to 10,000 ebooks, with a monthly average of 300 new ebooks. The fast growth was the work of Distributed Proofreaders, a website launched in October 2000 by Charles Franks to share the proofreading of books between many volunteers. Volunteers choose one of the books available on the site and proofread a given page. It is recommended they do a page per day if possible.
Books were also copied on CDs and DVDs. As blank CDs and DVDs cost next to nothing, Project Gutenberg began burning and sending a free CD or DVD to anyone asking for it. People were encouraged to make copies for a friend, a library or a school. Released in August 2003, the "Best of Gutenberg" CD contained 600 ebooks. The first Project Gutenberg DVD was released in December 2003 to celebrate the first 10,000 ebooks, with the burning of most titles (9,400 ebooks).
In December 2003, there were 11,000 ebooks, which represented 110 G, in several formats (ASCII, HTML, PDF and others, as is or zipped). In May 2004, there were 12,600 ebooks, with represented 135 G. With more than 300 new books added per month (338 books per month in 2004), the number of gigabytes was expected to double every year.
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