Project Gutenberg: how the first ebook appeared in 1971

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 09:00:00 -0300

4 July 1971. Michael Hart, a 24-year-old student at the University of Illinois, has just been given access to a Xerox Sigma V mainframe — one of the most powerful computers available at the time, connected to ARPAnet, the network that decades later would become the internet. Along with the access came a processing-time credit estimated at a hundred million dollars. What does a student do with that?

Hart came back from the grocery store with a printed copy of the American Declaration of Independence — the one that had been tucked into his shopping bag — and spent the night typing the text into the terminal. Then he sent the file out over the network. It was the first ebook in history. It was also file number 1 of Project Gutenberg, the free digital library Hart would maintain for the next forty years.

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Project Gutenberg: how the first ebook appeared in 1971