r them to be read
on any hardware and software. A book would become a continuous
text file instead of a set of pages, with caps for the terms in
italic, bold or underlined of the print version. As a text
file, a book would be easily copied, indexed, searched,
analyzed and compared with other books. (Doing such searches is
much harder in various markup formats.)

Project Gutenberg's mission would be the following: to put at
everyone's disposal, in electronic versions, as many literary
works from public domain as possible for free. Years later, in
August 1998, Michael wrote in an email interview: "We consider
etext to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper,
other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how
paper can possibly compete once people each find their own
comfortable way to etexts, especially in schools."

After keying in "The U.S. Declaration of Independence" in 1971,
Michael typed in "The U.S. Bill of Rights" in 1972. A volunteer
typed in "The United States Constitution" in 1973.

# Persevering

From one year to the next, disk space was getting larger, by
the standards of the time - there was no hard disk yet -,
making it possible to store larger files. Volunteers began
typing in the Bible, with one individual book at a time, and a
file for each book. Michael typed in the collected works of
Shakespeare, with the help of volunteers, one play at a time,
and a file for each play. This edition of Shakespeare was never
released, unfortunately, due to changes in copyright law.
Shakespeare's works belong to public domain, but comments and
notes may be copyrighted, depending on the publication date.
Other editions of Shakespeare from public domain were posted a
few years later.

# 10 to 1,000 ebooks

In August 1989, Project Gutenberg completed its 10th ebook,
"The King James Bible" (1769), both testaments, and 5 M for all
files.

In 1990, there were 250,000 internet users. The web was in its
infancy. The standard was 360 K disks.

In January 1991, Michael typed in "Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland" (1865), by Lewis Carroll. In July 1991, he typed in
"Peter Pan" (1904), by James M. Barrie. These two classics of
childhood literature each fit on one disk.

The first browser, Mosaic, was released in November 1993. It
became easier to circulate etexts and recruit volunteers. From
1991 to 1996, the number of ebooks doubled every year, with one
book per month in 1991, two books per mont