Printing & Publishing · Recorded milestone
Project Gutenberg e-texts
Recorded year1971
Michael Hart types the US Declaration of Independence into a University of Illinois computer and shares it, starting the first free e-book library.
Explore this milestone on the interactive mapBuilt on
- Time-sharingRecorded · 1961enables
- ARPANETRecorded · 1969enables
Led to
- E-readerRecorded · 1998enables
- Mass book scanningRecorded · 2004enables
Sources & evidence
Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.