Editing Project Gutenberg (section)

==History==
[[Image:Michael Hart and Gregory Newby at HOPE Conference.jpg|right|thumb|210px|[[Michael S. Hart]] (left) and Gregory Newby (right) of Project Gutenberg, at [[Hackers on Planet Earth]] (HOPE) Conference, 2006]]
[[Michael S. Hart]] began Project Gutenberg in 1971 with the digitization of the [[United States Declaration of Independence]].<ref>
{{cite web|url=http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/|title=Hobbes' Internet Timeline|access-date=17 February 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090505235502/http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/|archive-date=5 May 2009|url-status=live}}
</ref> Hart, a student at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign|University of Illinois]], obtained access to a [[SDS Sigma series|Xerox Sigma V]] [[mainframe computer]] in the university's Materials Research Lab. Through friendly operators, he received an account with a virtually unlimited amount of [[CPU time|computer time]]; its value at that time has since been variously estimated at $100,000 or $100,000,000.<ref>
{{cite web|first=Michael S.|last=Hart|author-link=Michael S. Hart|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_History_and_Philosophy_of_Project_Gutenberg_by_Michael_Hart|title=Gutenberg:The History and Philosophy of Project Gutenberg|date=August 1992|access-date=5 December 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061129155623/http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg%3AThe_History_and_Philosophy_of_Project_Gutenberg_by_Michael_Hart|archive-date=29 November 2006}}
</ref> Hart explained he wanted to "give back" this gift by doing something one could consider to be of great value. His initial goal was to make the 10,000 most consulted books available to the public at little or no charge by the end of the 20th century.<ref>
{{Cite book|author1=Day, B. H.|author2=Wortman, W. A.|year=2000|title=Literature in English: A Guide for Librarians in the Digital Age|page=[https://archive.org/details/literatureinengl00dayb/page/170 170]|publisher=Association of College and Research Libraries|location=Chicago|isbn=0-8389-8081-3|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/literatureinengl00dayb/page/170}}
</ref>

<blockquote>On July 4, 1971, after being inspired by a free printed copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, he decided to type the text into a computer, and to transmit it to other users on the computer network.
:— Gregory B. Newby<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Obituary_for_Michael_Stern_Hart|title = Obituary for Michael Stern Hart}}</ref></blockquote>

This particular computer was one of the 15 [[Node (networking)|nodes]] on [[ARPANET]], the computer network that would become the [[Internet]]. Hart believed one day the general public would be able to access computers and decided to make works of literature available in electronic form for free. He used a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence in his backpack, and this became the first Project Gutenberg [[e-text]]. He named the project for [[Johannes Gutenberg]], the fifteenth century German printer who propelled the [[movable type]] [[printing press]] revolution.

By the mid-1990s, Hart was running Project Gutenberg from [[Benedictine University|Illinois Benedictine College]]. More volunteers had joined the effort. He manually entered all of the text until 1989 when [[image scanner]]s and [[optical character recognition]] software improved and became more available, making [[book scanning]] more feasible.<ref>{{Cite news|first=Vauhini|last=Vara|title=Project Gutenberg Fears No Google|work=[[The Wall Street Journal]]|date=5 December 2005|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113415403113218620|access-date=15 August 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170809132037/https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113415403113218620|archive-date=9 August 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> Hart later came to an arrangement with [[Carnegie Mellon University]], which agreed to administer Project Gutenberg's finances. As the volume of e-texts increased, volunteers began to take over the project's day-to-day operations that Hart had run.

Italian volunteer Pietro Di Miceli developed and administered the first Project Gutenberg website and started the development of the Project online Catalog. In his ten years in this role (1994–2004), the Project web pages won a number of awards, often being featured in "best of the Web" listings, contributing to the project's popularity.<ref>{{cite web|date=8 June 2006|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Credits|title=Gutenberg:Credits|publisher=Project Gutenberg|access-date=15 August 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711033646/http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg%3ACredits|archive-date=11 July 2007}}</ref>

Starting in 2004, an improved online catalog made Project Gutenberg content easier to browse, access and [[hyperlink]]. Project Gutenberg is now hosted by [[ibiblio]] at the [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]].

Hart died on 6 September 2011 at his home in Urbana, Illinois, at the age of 64.<ref>{{cite web|date=6 September 2011|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart|title=Michael_S._Hart|publisher=Project Gutenberg|access-date=25 September 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110917035457/http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart|archive-date=17 September 2011}}</ref>