Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook, dies aged 64

Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart, who created the first ever ebook after deciding on a whim to type the US Declaration of Independence into a computer, has died at home in Urbana, Illinois, aged 64.

In 1971, Hart was given extensive computer time by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the University of Illinois. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, he pondered carefully what to do with his time. "I happened to stop at our local IGA grocery store on the way. "We were just coming up on the American Bicentennial and they put faux parchment historical documents in with the groceries. So, as I fumbled through my backpack for something to eat, I found the US Declaration of Independence and had a lightbulb moment. I thought for a while to see if I could figure out anything I could do with the computer that would be more important than typing in the Declaration of Independence, something that would still be there 100 years later, but couldn't come up with anything, and so Project Gutenberg was born," he said in an interview in 2002.

Today, Project Gutenberg is one of the largest collections of free ebooks in the world.

"What allowed me to think of this particular use for computers so long before anyone else did is the same thing that allows every other inventor to create their inventions: being at the right place, at the right time, with the right background. As Lermontov said in The Red Shoes: 'Not even the greatest magician in the world can pull a rabbit out of a hat if there isn't already a rabbit in it'," said Hart in 2002. "You have to remember that the internet had just gone transcontinental and this was one of the very first computers on it.

"Somehow I had envisioned the net in my mind very much as it would become 30 years later. I envisioned sending the Declaration of Independence to everyone on the net... all 100 of them... which would have crashed the whole thing, but luckily Fred Ranck stopped me, and we just posted a notice in what would later become comp.gen. I think about six out of the 100 users at the time downloaded it."

Hart began to type and scan other texts: 100 by 1993, 1,000 by 1997 – in 1998 he told Wired magazine that "20 or 30 years from now, there's going to be some gizmo that kids carry around in their back pocket that has everything in it - including our books, if they want" – and 10,000 by 2003. Today, with the help of hundreds of volunteers, Project Gutenberg offers readers access to 36,000 free ebooks, in 60 different languages and a range of formats. Run completely by volunteers, its mission is "to encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks".

"One thing about ebooks that most people haven't thought much is that
ebooks are the very first thing that we're all able to have as much as
we want other than air," Hart wrote in July 2011. "Think about that
for a moment and you realise we are in the right job."

A tribute to Hart, posted on Project Gutenberg by Dr Gregory B Newby, says that he "left a major mark on the world".

"Michael is remembered as a dear friend, who sacrificed personal luxury to fight for literacy, and for preservation of public domain rights and resources, towards the greater good," said Newby. "The invention of ebooks was not simply a technological innovation or precursor to the modern information environment. A more correct understanding is that ebooks are an efficient and effective way of unlimited free distribution of literature. Access to ebooks can thus provide opportunity for increased literacy. Literacy, and the ideas contained in literature, creates opportunity."

Hart is survived by his mother Alice and his brother Bennett.