INVENTOR

Michael S. Hart

1947 - 2011

Photo of Michael S. Hart

Icon of person Michael S. Hart

Michael Stern Hart (March 8, 1947 – September 6, 2011) was an American author, best known as the inventor of the e-book and the founder of Project Gutenberg (PG), the first project to make e-books freely available via the Internet. He published e-books via ARPANET years before the Internet existed, and later on BBS networks and Gopher servers. Hart devoted his life after founding PG in 1971 to digitizing and distributing literature from works in the public domain with free and expired copyrights. The first e-books were typed in plain text format and published as text files; other formats were made available later. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Michael S. Hart has received more than 177,508 page views. His biography is available in 25 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 23 in 2019). Michael S. Hart is the 277th most popular inventor (down from 263rd in 2019), the 4,881st most popular biography from United States (down from 4,242nd in 2019) and the 66th most popular American Inventor.

Memorability Metrics

  • 180k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 57.50

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 25

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 6.26

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 2.54

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among INVENTORS

Among inventors, Michael S. Hart ranks 277 out of 426. Before him are Glenn Curtiss, Adolf Martens, Cyrus McCormick, Sven Gustaf Wingqvist, Theodore Maiman, and Samuel Morland. After him are John Barnard, Whitcomb L. Judson, Joseph Aspdin, Ralph Hartley, Prokop Diviš, and George Devol.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1947, Michael S. Hart ranks 370. Before him are Laurent Pokou, Stephen Collins, Akira Terao, Alaksandar Milinkievič, Linda Thorson, and Vladimir Petrov. After him are Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Roy Raymond, Bill Richardson, Samuel Schmid, Svetlana Toma, and Veríssimo Correia Seabra. Among people deceased in 2011, Michael S. Hart ranks 208. Before him are Juan Arza, Erhard Loretan, Shammi Kapoor, Sargent Shriver, John Neville, and Kiki Håkansson. After him are Takaji Mori, Shigeo Yaegashi, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Vang Pao, Coen Moulijn, and Nicol Williamson.

Others Born in 1947

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Others Deceased in 2011

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Michael S. Hart ranks 4,881 out of 20,380. Before him are Fred Thompson (1942), George Catlin (1796), Jane Powell (1929), Henry Adams (1838), Gianni Russo (1943), and Seka (1954). After him are Theodore Edgar McCarrick (1930), Joel McCrea (1905), Helen Merrill (1930), Zelda Rubinstein (1933), Richard Kiley (1922), and Jonah Hill (1983).

Others born in United States

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Among INVENTORS In United States

Among inventors born in United States, Michael S. Hart ranks 66. Before him are Frank Zamboni (1901), Laurens Hammond (1895), Robert Cornelius (1809), Glenn Curtiss (1878), Cyrus McCormick (1809), and Theodore Maiman (1927). After him are Whitcomb L. Judson (1846), Ralph Hartley (1888), George Devol (1912), Jacob Perkins (1766), Lester Allan Pelton (1829), and Henry M. Leland (1843).

American born Inventors

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