author
Michael Hart
1947–2011
Best known for launching Project Gutenberg, he helped turn the idea of free digital books into something real long before e-readers became common. His work opened a path for millions of readers to find public-domain literature online at no cost.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Michael S. Hart was an American writer and digital publishing pioneer, born on March 8, 1947, in Tacoma, Washington, and died on September 6, 2011, in Urbana, Illinois. He is widely credited with inventing the e-book and founded Project Gutenberg in 1971 after typing and sharing the U.S. Declaration of Independence on a university computer network.
That simple act grew into a lifelong mission: making books freely available in electronic form. Hart spent decades typing, digitizing, and promoting public-domain texts, and Project Gutenberg became one of the earliest and most enduring online literary projects.
He is remembered not just for technical foresight, but for a clear, generous idea—that literature should be easy to share and easy to reach. For readers, librarians, and volunteers around the world, his legacy lives on in the vast free library he helped create.