Vale Michael Stern Hart The man who arguably gave the world its first glimpse of non-Sci-Fi e-books, Michael Stern Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, has died at the age of 64. Hart’s passing was announced in this obituary, posted on the Gutenberg Project’s Website. For those who understand e-books only in terms of the Amazon Kindle, Hart’s name …
For I fear we shall see precious few of his kind again.
The world is full of people who make the world open and, dare I say it, legitimately free for use, but there are precious few people who have the vision to do something that I would suggest has changed the world in its own way.
Of course not. Think about it a bit more. Gutenberg's press made distribution of the bible cheap and easy. This removed a lot of power from the church and initiated the move toward universal literacy. Hart hoped to extending this hence naming his project after Gutenberg.
No. He's not called Gutenberg, or related to Gutenberg.
The name for the project was chosen because Gutenberg invented the printing press and mechanical moving type printing. So he created the first books, or printed work, as we know it today. Michael Stern Hart supposedly invented ebooks, by typing the US Declaration of Independance into a mainframe at the Uni of Illinois, and then made the resulting file available to users on the network. Six people downloaded it.
So there's no familial connection to Gutenberg, and no Bible association.
books were printed on presses with movable type in that country in the 13th century, and with movable metal type in Korea in the 14th century. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg played a most significant role in advancing European culture - as, indeed, Michael Stern Hart did in advancing global culture with his own project five centuries later - but the former was as little the inventor of the printing press as the latter....
Henri
If you own an e-reader (Nook user myself), you owe it to yourself to go project gutenberg's website and fill it up with free books. Screw editors who shave off part of the books that they don't like, read as close to the original as possible.
Jules Verne's books are all free and have helped me through long trips and meetings.
This project could enable people that cannot afford books, to read the good works of the Masters.
Why lady Death, pick up a more undeserving soul when in life many scumbags remain who our beloved BOFH shall not get to? So many assholes, so little bullets. Why take one of the good ones?
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