Happy Birthday to the eBook! - The Scholarly Kitchen

"Fifty years ago, on July 4, 1971, Michael S. Hart, a computer scientist at the University of Illinois, was given an operator’s account to the University’s Xerox Sigma V mainframe and thereby access to the ARPANET. He was also given the freedom to do whatever he wanted with his “spare time” on the network.  At the time, access to computing power and the computing cycles and the network were extremely valuable (he [probably over-]estimated it at $100,000,000), and very limited. For example, in April of 1971, there were only 15 nodes and 23 host terminals on the network and it would be a further 5 years before the number of nodes hit 63. Recognizing the scarcity and value of the tools he now had access to use, he thought to “do something extremely worthwhile to do justice with [the computer time he] had been given”, by trying to create something of lasting value.  Hart then typed up the text of a copy of the Declaration of Independence he had been given earlier that day at a grocery store and sought to distribute the file. He initially thought to email the file to everyone on the network (he narrowly missed being a pioneer in spam!), but the system prevented him from doing so. Instead, Hart posted the text file on the network and thereby launched what was to become Project Gutenberg...."