Michael S. Hart Birthday

American author who founded Project Gutenberg and invented the e-book. It all started on 4^th July 1971 when Hart was given a user account on the University of Illinois computer system. And this was a big thing those days, when computers were scarce, owned and used only by institutions and academia.

In order to "give something back", Hart typed in the United States Declaration of Independence as a text file intending to distribute it for free. This first "e-book’ was followed by the Bible, works of Homer, Shakespeare and Mark Twain.

Your comments

IMPORTANT Have a question / problem? Click here to ask an expert.