January 2006 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

RE: [gutvol-d] my impression
by Dick Adicks 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

See the introduction to PG etext #26, Paradise Lost, identified there as "the oldest etext known to Project Gutenberg (ca. 1964-1965)" Dick Adicks

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Further comments by the Atari "Project Gutenberg" team leader
by Jon Noring 10 Jan '06

10 Jan '06

Everyone, In a prior message this afternoon I noted that the first mention of the phrase "Project Gutenberg" in Google Groups appeared in 1987, and had nothing to do with the PG we know. It was used internally by the Atari Corporation to describe a new laser printer. I asked Art Morgan, who headed up that project, and whose name is associated with the 1987 message, to clarify what he wrote, and why he chose the name "Project Gutenberg", which I know everyone here will relate to. With his permission, he said: "Yes, I personally came up with the name since I was team lead on the SLM804 project. We didn't assign the product a model number until fairly late in its development. I had to give a "sneak peek" talk on it, so I dubbed it Project Gutenberg. In 1987, Apple had the only true desktop publishing system around, way before HP started selling laser printers for PCs and commoditized them. Unfortunately, Apple's laser printer was a computer in itself, and they had to charge a premium for this redundancy. "Atari's CEO, Jack Tramiel, gave us the edict to create a laser printer "for the masses, not the classes". I came up with the idea to have the host system perform all the RIP (raster image processing) functions of the printer, and just "pump" the final bitmap image of the page to the printer. This would require only a "dumb" laser printer engine to get the job done. The Atari ST was the perfect printer host - it was based on the Motorola 68000 and had gobs of memory - exactly the platform found in Apple's laser printers. "It was easy to talk to Adobe to port their code to the ST since it was developed on the same 68000 platform. But, to lower the costs further, we went with a PostScript clone from Imagen, and a printer engine from TEC (not Canon). Anyway, we should have patented the whole lot because NeXT later used the host-based laser printer idea for their system, and now Dell offers one for PCs. "Why did I pick Gutenberg? Gutenberg's moveable type technology enabled the printing of low-cost bibles and brought the word of God to everyone, just as Atari's unique RIP technology brought desktop publishing to the masses ..." (In a followup reply, Art mentioned:) "Sorry to admit it, but I didn't know about Michael Hart until you told me about him. He sounds like quite a visionary fellow - like Ted Nelson or Alan Kay. "Feel free to use my text - I'm honored and flattered! Take care!" For those interested... Jon

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my impression
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 10 Jan '06

10 Jan '06

my impression is that mr. noring would like to knock michael hart down a few notches, and that's why he's doing his "historical research"... still, those of us who were promoting e-books back in the '80s know who was leading the pack. it was michael hart. and not only was he not getting any _credit_ then, he was actually derided as something of a kook... which he _is_, of course, but the kooks are often the people who end up transforming our world... :+) so to try and strip him of his credit here, now that we finally have come to realize his genius, well... it is downright cruel. small-minded and cruel... with due respect to the dreamers who came before and handed to us the _idea_ of electronic-books, including alan kaye, h.g. wells, and douglas adams, there is no question who _invented_ the e-book, by virtue of sitting down and actually entering one: it's michael hart... as one of the greatest inventors who ever lived said, only 1% is inspiration, the other 99% is perspiration. plus michael hart gave us something even better -- the concept of "unlimited distribution" of e-books... compared to the _commercial_ e-book efforts, which somehow noring wants on equal footing, look how many more riches _that_ idea gave us. -bowerbird p.s. along these lines, consider this from alan kaye: > "We're running on fumes technologically today," > he says. "The sad truth is that 20 years or so of > commercialization have almost completely missed > the point of what personal computing is about."

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Re: [gutvol-d] Early ebook history info wanted; "Alice"; Brown Corpus; Vannevar
by Joshua Hutchinson 09 Jan '06

09 Jan '06

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Noring" <jon(a)noring.name> > > Finally, Mark Bernstein, the founder of Eastgate, which in 1987 issued > several contemporary hypertext fiction ebooks on floppy disk and > CD-ROM, mentioned to me Asimov's mid-50's book "Foundation" where > ebooks are implicit. Has anyone read this book and can comment on > Asimov's 1950's vision for ebooks? > > Thanks! > > Jon Noring > Asimov mentions "film-books" in many of his works, but it is unclear if they are film strips of text running through a special reader or some kind of interactive medium or perhaps a "moving pictures" version of books. I think he leaves it deliberately vague. NOTE: I'm pulling this from memory as I don't have any of my Asimov books here at work to flip through. Josh

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re: [gutvol-d] 36,000 and counting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Jan '06

06 Jan '06

charles said: > Thanks though! no, thank _you_. it is a remarkable achievement to have motivated so many to enlist in the cause, with a good number (in the hundreds!) devoting _significant_ time and energy -- 10-40 hours a week! -- from busy lives... -bowerbird

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