71, Michael Hart created Project Gutenberg with the goal of making
available for free, and electronically, literary works belonging to the public
domain. A project that has long been considered by its critics as impossible on
a large scale. A pioneer site in a number of ways, Project Gutenberg was the
first information provider on the internet and is the oldest digital library.
Michael himself keyed in the first hundred books.

When the internet became popular, in the mid-1990s, the project got a boost and
an international dimension. Michael still typed and scanned in books, but now
coordinated the work of dozens and then hundreds of volunteers in many
countries. The number of electronic books rose from 1,000 (in August 1997) to
2,000 (in May 1999), 3,000 (in December 2000) and 4,000 (in October 2001).

30 years after its birth, Project Gutenberg is running at full capacity. It had
5,000 books online in April 2002, 10,000 books online in October 2003, and
15,000 books online in January 2005, with 400 new books available per month, 40
mirror sites in a number of countries, and books downloaded by the tens of
thousands every day.

Whether they were digitized 20 years ago or they are digitized now, all the
books are captured in Plain Vanilla ASCII (the original 7-bit ASCII), with the
same formatting rules, so they can be read easily by any machine, operating
system or software, including on a PDA or an eBook reader. Any individual or
organization is free to convert them to different formats, without any
restriction except respect for copyright laws in the country involved.

In January 2004, Project Gutenberg had spread across the Atlantic with the
creation of Project Gutenberg Europe. On top of its original mission, it also
became a bridge between languages and cultures, with a goal of one million
eBooks in 2015, and a number of national and linguistic sections. While adhering
to the same principle: books for all and for free, through electronic versions
that can be used and reproduced indefinitely. And, as a second step, the
digitization of images and sound, in the same spirit.

2. HISTORY, FROM THE ORIGINS TO TODAY

= The Beginnings in 1971

Let us get back to the beginnings of the project. When he was a student at the
University of Illinois (USA), Michael Hart was given $100,000,000 of computer
time at the Materials Research Lab of his university. On July 4, 1971, on
Independence Day, Michael keyed in The United