Michael Hart was a very innovative tinkerer who was born March 8, 1947 in Tacoma Washington. Hart was a could be seen as a renaissance man, he was an Eagle scout and a war veteran. His mother and father were both very bright people one being an accountant and the other a business manager. I think the most interesting aspect of his parents was the fact that his mother was a crypt-analyst during the 2nd world war. For those of us who do not know exactly what that is it is a person who deciphers codes and hidden messages. During the world wars cracking codes played a huge roll on changing the tide of the war. Growing up Hart was exposed to very smart people more particularly his parents who were very mathematically well rounded. Attending the University of Illinois it only took Hart two years to graduate so you can just imagine how smart and successful he was.
At the University of Illinois Hart was granted unlimited access to a computer which had a huge impact on his future. Now mind you back in 1971 there was much more time for people to use computers than there were people to use them. In simpler terms computers just were not very popular and alien to most people. Hart instead of learning about the computer or doing normal things decided to just start copying down text into the systems memory. His first text that he copied down was actually the declaration of independence. His whole idea behind transcribing all of these documents was to make them open and accessible to the public. The works of Shakespeare and even the Bible could be found among his downloads. The machines at the time were connected to
ARPAnet which at the time was pretty much a form of security for the military when they communicated with computers. ARPAnet, which in fact decades later would eventually become the internet, served as an access point for people who wanted to view these many texts that Hart typed down.
When Hart was given the time to work on these computers, that was when Project Gutenberg was born. For almost twenty years Hart copied texts onto what would soon be known as an e-book. Through means of computer programmers and many other helpers Hart was able to create an idea that would eventually produce over one hundred million dollars for him. Hart would find it funny that he produced so much out of just typing words down into a machines memory system. Through the means of discs and hard drives, Harts dream of creating a huge data base of texts would come true.
Many who knew him would come to say that Hart was a very odd creature, or very unreasonable. He would do whatever it took to keep his project up and running. Since he did not own a car for a very long time Hart could be seen shipping all of his computers around in a cart that was attached to his bike. He was constantly asking people to borrow equipment, or even their physical help with whatever he was trying to get done. Recruiting people to join his e-book army was definitely a big factor in Project Gutenberg's success. His relentlessness in finding help added to his unreasonable nature. Another odd thing about him was that whenever he got sick, instead of just going to the doctor he would make home remedies to help. Through Harts brilliance and weirdness he was able to assemble computers through scraps of random equipment that was discarded by other users. Harts favorite quote,
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." Although being very bizarre and as mention "unreasonable" was in his nature, his oddities would help shape the internet to become what it is today.
