Project Gutenberg's Booknology: The eBook (1971-2010), by Marie Lebert

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Title: Booknology: The eBook (1971-2010)

Author: Marie Lebert

Release Date: December 5, 2010 [EBook #33460]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKNOLOGY: THE EBOOK (1971-2010) ***

Produced by Al Haines

BOOKNOLOGY: THE EBOOK (1971-2010)

MARIE LEBERT

Updated version, November 2010

Copyright © 2010 Marie Lebert. All rights reserved.

—- Marie Lebert is a researcher and journalist specializing in technology for books and languages. She is the author of "A Short History of eBooks" (NEF, University of Toronto, 2009), "The Internet and Languages" (NEF, 2009) and "Technology and Books for All" (NEF, 2008). Her books are freely available in Project Gutenberg <www.gutenberg.org> and in ManyBooks.net <http://manybooks.net>, in various formats for any electronic device (computer, PDA, mobile phone, smartphone, and ebook reader). —-

From 1971 to 2010 > Booknology, an ebook timeline

The electronic book (ebook) was born in 1971, as eText #1 from Project Gutenberg, a visionary project created by Michael Hart to freely disseminate electronic versions of literary works. 40 years later, ebooks are part of our lives. We read them on our computers, PDAs, mobile phones, smartphones, and ebook readers. [Please forgive my mistakes in English, if any. My mother tongue is French.]

July 1971 > Project Gutenberg, a visionary project

The first ebook was available in July 1971, as eText #1 of Project Gutenberg, a visionary project launched by Michael Hart to create electronic versions of literary works and disseminate them worldwide. In the 16th century, Gutenberg allowed anyone to have print books for a small cost. In the 21st century, Project Gutenberg would allow anyone to have a digital library at no cost. Project Gutenberg got its first boost with the invention of the web in 1990 and its second boost with the creation of Distributed Proofreaders in 2000, to help digitizing books from public domain. In 2010, Project Gutenberg offered more than 33,000 ebooks being downloaded by the tens of thousands every day, with websites in the United States, in Australia, in Europe, and in Canada.

1974 > The internet took off

When Project Gutenberg started in July 1971, the internet was just a glimmer, with a pre-internet set up in 1969. The internet took off in 1974 with the creation of the TCP/IP protocol by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn. It expanded as a network linking U.S. governmental agencies, universities and research centers. The internet got its first boost with the invention of the web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, and its second boost with the release of the first public browser Mosaic in 1993. The Internet Society (ISOC) was founded in 1992 by Vinton Cerf to promote the development of the internet as a medium that was quickly spreading worldwide to become part of our lives.

1977 > ASCII extensions for a few European languages

Used since the beginning of computing, ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a 7-bit coded character set for information interchange in English. It was published in 1968 by ANSI (American National Standards Institute), with an update in 1977 and 1986. The 7-bit plain ASCII, also called Plain Vanilla ASCII, is a set of 128 characters with 95 printable unaccented characters (A-Z, a-z, numbers, punctuation and basic symbols), the ones that are available on the English / American keyboard. With the use of other European languages, extensions of ASCII (also called ISO-8859 or ISO-Latin) were created as sets of 256 characters to add accented characters as found in French, Spanish and German, for example ISO 8859-1 (ISO-Latin-1) for French.

1977 > UNIMARC, a common bibliographic format

The IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) published the first edition of "UNIMARC: Universal MARC Format" in 1977, followed by a second edition in 1980 and a UNIMARC Handbook in 1983. UNIMARC (Universal Machine Readable Cataloging) was set up as a solution to the 20 existing national MARC formats, with a lack of compatibility and extensive editing when bibliographic records were exchanged. With UNIMARC, catalogers would be able to process records created in any MARC format. Records in one MARC format would first be converted into UNIMARC, and then be converted into another MARC format. UNIMARC would also be promoted as a format on its own.

1984 > Copyleft, to adapt copyright to the internet

The term "copyleft" was invented in 1984 by Richard Stallman, a computer scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), who launched the GNU Project. As explained on its website: "Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. (…) Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom. (…) Copyleft is a way of using of the copyright on the program. It doesn't mean abandoning the copyright; in fact, doing so would make copyleft impossible. The word 'left' in 'copyleft' is not a reference to the verb 'to leave' - only to the direction which is the inverse of 'right'. (…) The GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) is a form of copyleft intended for use on a manual, textbook or other document to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifications, either commercially or non commercially."

1984 > The Psion Organiser was the first electronic agenda

Launched in 1984 by the British company Psion, the Psion Organiser was the first electronic agenda. Later on, Psion launched the Psion Series 3 and Series 5, and the company expanded internationally. In 2000, the various models (Series 7, Series 5mx, Revo, Revo Plus) competed with the Palm Pilot and the Pocket PC. With fewer sales, the company decided to diversify its activities. Following the acquisition of Teklogix, Psion Teklogix was created in September 2000 to develop wireless mobile solutions for businesses. Psion Software was founded in 2001 to develop software for the new generation of mobile devices using the Symbian OS platform, for example the smartphone Nokia 9210, launched the same year.

1986 > Franklin launched dictionaries on handheld devices

Franklin, a company based in New Jersey (United States), launched in 1986 the first dictionary available on a handheld device. Fifteen years later, Franklin distributed 200 reference books on handheld devices: monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedias, Bibles, textbooks, medical books, and books for entertainment.

1990 > The World Wide Web took off

The World Wide Web was invented in 1989-90 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research, that later became the