{"id":1955,"date":"2011-09-16T11:32:04","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T10:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/?p=1955"},"modified":"2011-09-16T11:32:04","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T10:32:04","slug":"the-legacy-of-michael-s-hart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/16\/the-legacy-of-michael-s-hart\/","title":{"rendered":"The Legacy of Michael S. Hart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ship<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes people are important to you not for who they are, but for what they do. Michael S. Hart<\/a>, the founder of Project Gutenberg<\/a>, is one such person. While I never met him, Michael’s work has definitely impacted my life: The last book I finished<\/a> ((The Book of Dragons, by Edith Nesbit: highly recommended, especially if you like silly explanations or fairy tales with morals.)), like most of my fiction reading over the past 3 years, was a public domain ebook. I love the illustrations.<\/p>\n

\"KENBAK-1<\/a>

The first personal computer: KENBAK-1 (1971)<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1971, the idea of pleasure reading on screens must have been novel. The personal computer had just been invented; a KENBAK-1<\/a> would set you back $750 — equivalent to $4200 in 2011 dollars ((CPI Inflation Calculator<\/a>)).<\/p>\n

\"Xerox<\/a>

Xerox Sigma V-SDS mainframe<\/p><\/div>\n

Project Gutenberg’s first text — the U.S. Declaration of Independence — was keyed into a mainframe, about one month after Unix was first released ((Computer history timeline 1960-1980<\/a>)) ((Project Gutenberg Digital Library Seeks To Spur Literacy:
\nLibrary hopes to offer 1 million electronic books in 100 languages<\/a>, 2007-07-20, Jeffrey Thomas)). That mainframe, a Xerox Sigma V, was one of the first 15 computers on the Internet (well, technically, ARPANET) ((Amazingly, this predated NCSA. You can see the building–Thomas Siebel–hosting the node thanks to a UIUC Communication Technology and Society class assignment<\/a>)). Project Gutenberg is an echo of the generosity of some UIUC sysadmins: The first digital library began a gift back to the world in appreciation of access to that computer.<\/p>\n

Thanks, Michael.<\/p>\n

Originally via @muttinmall<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes people are important to you not for who they are, but for what they do. Michael S. Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, is one such person. While I never met him, Michael’s work has definitely impacted my life: The last book I finished ((The Book of Dragons, by Edith Nesbit: highly recommended, especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,58,85,64],"tags":[445,440,442,441,278,443,444,438,439],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-reading","category-future-of-publishing","category-information-ecosystem","category-library-and-information-science","tag-arpanet","tag-computer-history","tag-crowdsourcing","tag-digital-library-history","tag-ebooks","tag-gift-economy","tag-mainframes","tag-michael-s-hart","tag-project-gutenberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1982,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions\/1982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}