Michael Stanton Hart
Michael Stanton Hart was born in the United States in the late 1950s. He studied chemistry and mathematics at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although his fields of study were in science and technology, Hart was passionate about literature, writing and literature preservation. Hart had a dream to read all of the world’s great literature. In 1971, after graduating from college, Hart began to implement his dream. By 1971, Hart had read many of the great works of world literature, but there was still much more to be read.
In 1972, Hart became a member of the newly formed Project Gutenberg. This project was designed to create digital texts of printed books by volunteering individuals. Hart created an index of all the works he had collected and within two years the total number of books in the Project Gutenberg index had grown to seven hundred and fifty.
In the following years, Hart worked on securing copyrights for the works he had added, and continued working on the project to keep it up to date. In 2000, the website of the Project Gutenberg was launched, providing access to the digital texts from all over the world. During this time, Hart also founded Distributed Proofreaders, a website dedicated to proofreading the works in the Project Gutenberg collection.
Hart worked for the Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders for the next three decades. During this time, digital texts were increasing exponentially and the collection grew to over fifty-thousand. He worked on the project full time, and managed the day-to-day tasks. Even after thirty years, Hart was just as dedicated to the project as the day he began. He was passionate about preserving and making accessible the world’s great literature, and his work was an essential part in making this dream a reality.
Michael Stanton Hart devoted his life to literature and literature preservation, and in doing so he accomplished his dream of making all of the world’s great literature available to all. His hard work and dedication to the Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders has allowed generations the opportunity to explore and read these texts. His legacy will be remembered forever.
