Michael S. Hart
American author, founder of Project Gutenberg (1947–2011) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Michael Stern Hart (March 8, 1947 – September 6, 2011)[1] was an American author, best known as the inventor of the e-book and the founder of Project Gutenberg (PG), the first project to make e-books freely available via the Internet.[1][2][3][4] He published e-books via ARPANET years before the Internet existed,[5][6] and later on BBS networks[7] and Gopher servers.[8]
Michael S. Hart | |
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Born | Michael Stern Hart (1947-03-08)March 8, 1947 Tacoma, Washington, U.S. |
Died | September 6, 2011(2011-09-06) (aged 64) Urbana, Illinois, U.S. |
Alma mater | University of Illinois |
Occupation | Author |
Known for | Project Gutenberg |
Website | hart |
Hart devoted his life after founding PG in 1971 to digitizing and distributing literature from works in the public domain with free and expired copyrights. The first e-books[5][9] were typed in plain text format[6][7] and published as text files; other formats were made available later. Hart typed most of the early e-books himself; later, volunteers expanded the project.[5][10][11]