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Michael Hart, who laid the foundation for today’s e-book industry by launching Project Gutenberg 40 years ago, died Tuesday at age 64, the project announced.
Hart began the digitization project on July 4, 1971, by typing the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence into a Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois. Next came the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, the Bible, and Shakespeare.
The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, opening next week, is designed to accommodate the way people study and research today — online. The structure’s large spaces are made for computer work and have no traditional bookshelves.
Instead, the library boasts a massive underground storage area holding 3.5 million volumes on 50-foot-high shelves. The collection is managed by robotic systems that help create an environment where scholars can scour the web for hours for academic papers and still get a hard-to-find volume from the stacks.
Robots Retrieve Books in University of Chicago’s New, Futuristic Library
