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Project Gutenberg is a pioneering online library of free eBooks, founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart. Motivated by his access to abundant mainframe resources, Hart typed the United States Declaration of Independence into a computer and shared it, marking the creation of the first eBook . Since then, tens of thousands of volunteers have contributed to digitizing public-domain texts—classic literature, historical documents, reference works—making them freely available in formats like plain text, EPUB, and Kindle. Today, Project Gutenberg offers over 60,000 eBooks in multiple languages, committed to the mission that "literature should be as free as the air we breathe"
Project Gutenberg, named after the inventor of the movable‑type printing press, is the world’s first and oldest digital library. It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, a student at the University of Illinois. With generous access to Xerox Sigma V mainframe time, Hart chose to “repay” it by creating electronic literature—starting with the Declaration of Independence—which he then shared over ARPANET, seeding the eBook movement .
From its humble start—Hart manually typing in texts—to the evolution of scanning and optical character recognition, Project Gutenberg has grown steadily. Volunteers worldwide now proofread and digitize public-domain works, adding thousands of new eBooks annually in multiple languages and formats . The core philosophy centers on "replicator technology," the idea that once a text is in digital form, it can be copied infinitely at virtually no cost. Texts are provided in simple formats like ASCII to ensure maximum accessibility across devices.
The project’s goal was ambitious: make the “10,000 most consulted books” freely available by the end of the 20th century. Though Michael Hart passed away in 2011, his mission lives on. Project Gutenberg now houses well over 60,000 eBooks, supported by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and powered by volunteers using platforms like Distributed Proofreaders
Why it matters:
🌐 Democratizes knowledge — anyone, anywhere, can access cultural and literary works for free.
💾 Technological foresight — plain-text ebooks ensure longevity and device compatibility.
🧑🤝🧑 Driven by community — thousands donate time through digitizing and proofreading.
📖 Formats for all — from plain ASCII to EPUB, MOBI, PDF, and even audio or musical scores.
Project Gutenberg paved the way in the digital text revolution, echoing Johannes Gutenberg’s original print democratization by making the written word available to the masses once more—this time through the power of the Internet .
