Produced by Al Haines ?Project Gutenberg 4 July 1971 - 4 July 2011: Album 4 July 1971 - 4 July 2011 > An album to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Project Gutenberg This album is dedicated to all Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders volunteers worldwide. The first ebook was available on 4 July 1971, as eText #1 of Project Gutenberg, a visionary project launched by Michael Hart to create free 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. 4 July 1971 > eText #1 > The United States Declaration of Independence On 4 July 1971, Michael Hart keyed in The United States Declaration of Independence (signed on 4 July 1776) to the mainframe he was using, in upper case, because there was no lower case yet. The file was 5 K. Michael mentioned to the 100 users of the pre-internet of the time where the etext was stored--though without a hypertext link, because the web was still 20 years ahead. It was downloaded by six users. 4 July 1971 > As recalled by Michael Hart As recalled by Michael Hart in January 2009: "On July 4, 1971, while still a freshman at the University of Illinois (UI), I decided to spend the night at the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the UI Materials Research Lab, rather than walk miles home in the summer heat, only to come back hours later to start another day of school. I stopped on the way to do a little grocery shopping to get through the night, and day, and along with the groceries they put in the faux parchment copy of The U.S. Declaration of Independence that became quite literally the cornerstone of Project Gutenberg. That night, as it turned out, I received my first computer account--I had been hitchhiking on my brother's best friend's name, who ran the computer on the night shift. When I got a first look at the huge amount of computer money I was given, I decided I had to do something extremely worthwhile to do justice to what I had been given. (...) As I emptied out groceries, the faux parchment Declaration of Independence fell out, and the light literally went on over my head like in the cartoons and comics... I knew what the future of computing, and the internet, was going to be... 'The Information Age.' The rest, as they say, is history." (NEF Interview) July 1971 > Project Gutenberg's mission