Project Gutenberg's Booknology: The eBook (1971-2010), by Marie Lebert

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Title: Booknology: The eBook (1971-2010)

Author: Marie Lebert

Release Date: August 18, 2010 [EBook #33460]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKNOLOGY: THE EBOOK (1971-2010) ***

Produced by Al Haines

BOOKNOLOGY: THE EBOOK (1971-2010)

MARIE LEBERT

From 1971 to 2010 > Booknology, an ebook timeline

The electronic book (ebook) was born in 1971, as eText #1 from Project
Gutenberg, a visionary project founded by Michael Hart to freely
disseminate literary works electronically. It is nearly 40 years old, a
short life compared to the 5-century old print book. In March 2010,
there are ten million freely available books from public domain on the
internet, that is to say 40% of the 25 million books from public domain
(without counting various editions). Recent books can now be bought
from digital bookstores, and read on computers, smartphones and ebook
readers. [Please forgive my mistakes in English, if any. My mother
tongue is French.]

July 1971 > The Project Gutenberg, a visionary project

The first ebook was available in July 1971, as eText #1 of Project
Gutenberg, a visionary project launched by Michael Hart to create
electronic versions of literary works and disseminate them worldwide.
In the 16th century, Gutenberg allowed anyone to have print books for a
small cost. In the 21st century, Project Gutenberg would allow anyone
to have a digital library at no cost. Its critics long considered
Project Gutenberg as impossible on a large scale. But Michael went on
keying book after book during many years, with the occasional help of
some volunteers. Project Gutenberg got its first boost with the
invention of the web in 1990 and its second boost with the creation of
Distributed Proofreaders in 2000, to help digitizing books from public
domain. In 2009, Project Gutenberg had a collection of 30,000 ebooks,
38 mirror sites worldwide, and books being downloaded by the tens of
t