Mr Hart is the man we have most to thank for electronic books, or e-books, as we now know them. Way, way back in 1971 (the "personal computer" didn't even exist because conventional wisdom cried, Who would want to take work home?) as a freshman at the University of Illinois he had access to the mainframe computer and, bored silly, typed the entire Declaration of Independence into the system. When six people downloaded it the young Hart was encouraged to go forth.
He called himself a "cyber-hippie" (but did a stint in the US Army before college) and would go on to found Project Gutenberg, an online library. Quoted in the Chicago Tribune in 1999:
I'm not doing this to make the academic community happy. I am a revolutionary in this neo-industrial revolution. That's why they have trouble with me. How can anyone be troubled by free information?He died in Urbana, Ill. He was sixty-four.
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