eTexts, especially in schools."

After he keyed in The United States Declaration of Independence in 1971, Michael went on in 1972 and typed in a longer text, The United States Bill of Rights, that includes the ten first amendments added in 1789 to the Constitution (dated 1787) and defining the individual rights of the citizens and the distinct powers ot the Federal Government and the States. In 1973, Michael typed in the full text of The United States Constitution.

From one year to the next, disk space was getting larger, by the standards of the time (there was no hard disk yet), so it was possible to plan bigger files. Michael began typing in the Bible, because the individual books of the Bible could be processed separately as different files. He also worked on the collected works of Shakespeare, with one play at a time, and a file for each play. That edition of Shakespeare was never released, due to copyright changes. If Shakespeare's works belong to the public domain, the comments and notes may be copyrighted, depending on the publication date. But other editions belonging to the public domain were posted a few years later.

In parallel, the internet, which was still embryonic in 1971, was born in 1974 with the creation of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn. Its rapid expansion started in 1983.

= 10 to 10,000 Books

In August 1989, Project Gutenberg completed its 10th book, The King James Bible, that was first published in 1611, with the standard text dated 1769. In 1990, there were 250,000 internet users, and the standard was 360 K disks. In January 1991, Michael typed in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (published in 1865). In July 1991, he typed in Peter Pan, by James M. Barrie (published in 1904). These two worldwide classics of childhood literature each fitted on one disk.

1991 was also the year the web became operational. The first browser, Mosaic, was released in November 1993. As the web was becoming a popular medium, it became easier to circulate eTexts and recruit volunteers. Project Gutenberg gradually got into its stride, with the digitization of one book per month in 1991, two books per month in 1992, four books per month in 1993 and eight books per month in 1994. In January 1994, Project Gutenberg celebrated its 100th book by releasing The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote most of his work between 1590 and 1613. The steady growth went on, with an average of 8 books per month in 1994, 16 books per month in 1995, and 32 books per month in 1996.

As we can see, from 1991 to 1996, the "output" doubled every year. While continuing to digitize books, Michael was also coordinating the work of dozens of volunteers. At the end of 1993, Project Gutenberg's eTexts were organized into three main sections: a) "Light Literature", such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan or Aesop's Fables; b) "Heavy Literature", such as the Bible, Shakespeare's works or Moby Dick; c) "Reference Literature", such as Roget's Thesaurus, and a set of encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This organization in three sections was abandoned later for a more detailed classification.

Project Gutenberg's goal is to be "universal" both for the literary works that are chosen and the audience who reads them. The goal is to put literature at everyone's disposal. With a focus on books that many people would use frequently, and not only students and teachers. For example, the "Light Literature" section is intended for pre-schoolers as well as their grandparents. The aim is that they will want to look up the eText of Peter Pan when they come back from watching Hook at the movies. Or that they will read the eText of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland after seeing it on TV. Or that they will look for the context of a quotation after hearing it in one of the Star Trek episodes; nearly every episode of Star Trek quotes from books which are in the Project Gutenberg collections.

The idea is that, whether they were avid readers of print books or not in the past, people should easily be able to look up quotations they hear in conversations, movies, music, or they read in books, newspapers and magazines, within a library containing all these quotations in an easy-to-use format. eTexts don't take up much space in ASCII format. They can be easily downloaded with a standard phone line. Searching a word or a phrase is simple too. People can easily search an entire eText by using the plain "search" menu available in any program.

In 1997, the "output" was still an average of 32 books per month. In June 1997,
Project Gutenberg released The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle
(published in 1883). In August 1997, it released its 1000th book, La Divina
Commedia di Dante (published in 1321), in Italian, its original language.

In August 1998, Michael wrote: "My own personal goal is to put 10,000 eTexts on the Net [editor's note: his goal was reached in October 2003] and if I can get some major support, I would like to expand that to 1,000,000 and to also expand our potential audience for the average eText from 1.x% of the world population to over 10%, thus changing our goal from giving away 1,000,000,000,000 eTexts to 1,000 times as many, a trillion and a quadrillion in US terminology."

= 1,000 to 10,000 Books

From 1998 to 2000, there was a steadfast average of 36 new books per month. In May 1999, there were 2,000 books. The 2000th book was Don Quijote, by Cervantes (published in 1605), in Spanish, its original language.

Released in December 2000, the 3000th book was the third volume of A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower), by Marcel Proust (published in 1919), in French, its original language. Around 104 books per month were released in 2001.

Released in October 2001, the 4000th book was The French Immortals Series, in English. Published in 1905 by Maison Mazarin, Paris, this book is an anthology of short fictions by authors belonging to the renowned French Academy (Académie française), notably Emile Souvestre, Pierre Loti, Hector Malot, Charles de Bernard and Alphonse Daudet.

Available in April 2002, the 5000th book was The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, which he wrote at the beginning of the 16th century. A text that is steadily in the Top 100 of downloaded texts.

In 1988, Michael Hart chose to digitize Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Peter Pan because they each fitted on one 360 K disk, the standard of the time. Fifteen years later, in 2002, 1.44 M is the standard disk and ZIP is the standard compression. The practical file size is about 3 million characters, more than long enough for the average book. The digitized ASCII version of a 300-page novel is 1 M. A bulky book can fit in two ASCII files, that can be downloaded as is or in ZIP format.

An average of 50 hours is necessary to get an eText selected, copyright-cleared, scanned, proofread, formatted and assembled.

A few numbers are reserved for "special" books. For example, eBook number 1984 is reserved for George Orwell's classic, published in 1949, and still a long way from falling into the public domain.

In 2002, around 100 books were released per month. In Spring 2002, Project Gutenberg's books represented 1/4 of all the public domain works freely available on the web and listed nearly exhaustively by the Internet Public Library (IPL). An impressive result thanks to the relentless work of thousands of volunteers in several countries.

1,000 books in August 1997, 2,000 books in May 1999, 3,000 books in December 2000, 4,000 books in October 2001, 5,000 books in April 2002, 10,000 books in October 2003. eBook number 10000 is