Bowerbird wrote:
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"...
The important thing is to gather the facts as best as can be done from primary sources, and the recollections of those who lived then. Let the facts speak for themselves. I welcome, and want, Michael Hart, for example, to provide specific information of the 1971 to 1989-90 period, such as what texts he keyed in and distributed on various networks (the fledgling Internet and BBS), besides the nine "political" ones which form PG texts #1-9 (like the Declaration of Independence -- not that I have anything against these texts, but they are not book length works.) I hope that a few PGers will take an interest in this evolving project and submit their tidbits of ebook lore and history (and hopefully references) to the ebook-history group. Bowerbird, you are welcome to add your own knowledge of the old-days. Anyway, if I'm guilty of anything, it's that I want to get to the bottom of the truth, so everything can be put into its proper and correct perspective, whatever that may turn out to be.
still, those of us who were promoting e-books back in the '80s know who was leading the pack. it was michael hart.
What I'm still having trouble finding is any pre-1989 references to Michael Hart in relation to his text activities. On Usenet, it is a total blank (according to Google groups, which has archived Usenet and Bitnet back before 1985.) The first mention I've found of "Project Gutenberg" on Usenet is a message posted 15 Jan 1990, which contains a few messages written by Michael Hart on 20 Dec 1989 talking about Project Gutenberg, and that it is #1 in a series: http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.esperanto/msg/5e7ebc23a2866f1b?dmode=source&hl=en People like Bowerbird who were plying the BBS back in the late 80's may vaguely remember some things, but I'd like to know specifics. Were there newspaper and magazine articles covering MH? Were any of his texts, besides the short political ones that form PG texts #1-9, being distributed around BBS and ftp sites in the late 1980's? I simply see a dearth of information. Even Michael Hart's various bios, including his wikipedia, are fuzzy on what he did between 1971 and 1988/9 other than to say that technology was not quite there to do anything major, including with volunteers. When we see the first mention of PG in 1990, PG rapidly grew after that, and the rest is history. I can only surmise that even if Michael were thinking about launching PG (in a "let's get thousands of volunteers to type in books" way) in the mid-80's, he did not do so -- he waited for technology to hit a critical point. This is understandable. Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes: "there's a time and place for everything under the sun" -- and at least from the evidence I've seen, he really didn't go gangbusters on the volunteer-driven Project Gutenberg vision until very late in 1989. Yet I know there were commercial ebook projects in the 1986 time frame, and I think even before. A Turkish scholar digitized the complete works of a famous Turkish poet in 1986. Lots and lots of stuff, but nothing about Michael Hart in the same mid- to late- 80's time frame. Help me, people, let me know what's missing... Would love to get the original GUTNBERG Bitnet list archive, if it exists before 1990. That should be placed online (if not already).
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...
So you are saying the history of ebooks should not be studied in full because it might clarify everyone's actual role in the history of the ebook? As I noted, I welcome *everyone* to submit ebook lore tidbits, especially for the pre-1990 period. I'm not really planning to write the actual history, but to help collect the bits and pieces for either a historian to write, or a *group* of us to write for the wikipedia. The truth is out there, as Mulder would say. What really happened is what should be documented. No more, no less.
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...
He may have been the first to experiment with placing a short text on a computer for the purpose that others may electronically access it for reading. But I'm not so sure of that. With Brown University keypunching in over 1,000,000 words in the mid-1960's, plus the various types of pioneering electronic text research they and others were doing at the time, someone might have experimented with this, and possibly even wrote about it in journal articles. That it is not reported may be due to them not seeing the importance of it right away (it was the 1960's -- even by 1971 visualization hardware on computers greatly improved -- my wife worked in the early computer hardware days in an image processing lab.) When I worked as a research associate at the University of Minnesota, I investigated a lot of odd things that never got published, but on rare occasion have shared that 20 years after the fact with interested researchers who *were* interested in it. I believe Michael Hart when he says he did what he did back in 1971. But did he publish it? When was that information first made "public"? And this is not proof that he was the first to experiment with it. The only thing we are sure of is that today, no one else has stepped forward to claim having done it earlier. That's why I'm hoping to talk to those involved with the Brown research in the 1960's and 70's since they probably know a lot of interesting tidbits of who did what around the world in the late 60's and early 70's regarding electronic text research and ideas related to what we today define to be an "ebook". ***** It is interesting that in my search, the first use of the phrase "Project Gutenberg" as found in Google Groups was in 1987 by the Atari Corporation! I just talked with the guy, Art Morgan, who led the project at Atari at the time using that project name. He wrote, in part, "...I used "Project Gutenberg" as the internal code name for the Atari SLM804 Laser Printer. We (Atari) never trademarked the name, and used it for briefings to user groups and the press shortly before the product launch of the Atari desktop publishing system. Since we didn't commercially use the name, Mr. Hart probably had no knowledge that Atari was using it. That is, unless he owned an Atari ST and was plugged into the Atari user community at the time." Mr. Morgan also seemed to imply that he never even heard of Michael Hart's Project Gutenberg even up to today (have another email in with him to clarify that. Definitely it does not seem like there was any communication between Atari and Michael at that time.)
plus michael hart gave us something even better -- the concept of "unlimited distribution" of e-books...
The biggest contribution Michael Hart gave is that he promoted with a zealousness unmatched by anyone else the need to digitize public domain books and distribute them for free to everyone and anyone, and organizing volunteers to help make this a reality. This is his legacy and place in the ebook universe, and what a wonderful legacy it is. I currently believe that in public discourse Barry Shein and his "KiloMonkeys" (later OBI) proposal (from Sept 1989) beat MH to the punch in the public airing of the idea which includes volunteerism (subject to change as new evidence surfaces.) But Michael Hart made it happen. (To be fair to Barry, he was diverted in running the world.std.com ISP, while Michael threw himself full-time into PG, which is necessary to run a network of volunteers, so that's why the Online Book Initiative never gained the same traction as PG did in the early 1990's. Michael probably has more interesting info to share about Barry Shein and his KiloMonkeys proposal in 1989. Maybe Michael did publicly propose the PG idea earlier than Barry Shein's "KiloMonkeys", but I've not found any mention in the Google database, nor in any of the bios on Michael.)
compared to the _commercial_ e-book efforts, which somehow noring wants on equal footing, look how many more riches _that_ idea gave us.
All aspects of digital publications, both copyrighted and public domain, are important when gathering the history of ebooks and digital publications. It's a complex, multi-faceted area with many players. I do believe when the final history is written, it will be very much like the automobile in complexity, seminal events and individuals. Jon Noring (p.s., doing a quick check on Google looking for the archive of the GUTNBERG list, bit.listserv.gutnberg -- Google groups has 717 messages for this group, and the oldest, a cross-post to the rec.arts.books, dated 17 July 1990, is a request for an online copy of the "Taming of the Shrew". So, again, I somehow believe this group, intended for use by the volunteers, was not around before 1990 or so. But let me know if it was!)