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A BRIEF HISTORY OF PROJECT GUTENBERGA BRIEF HISTORY OF PROJECT GUTENBERG
by Michael S. Hart, Founder
This history is the result of several requests and suggestions
from friends, colleagues, media personalities, etc. on the eve
of the 35th anniversary of Project Gutenberg which takes place
a few days from now on July 4, 2006.
From my own perspective, I prefer to concentrate on the future
as that is where even larger changes will take place, and ever
on the present, as that is when the changes DO take place, but
I realize that there is a place for such a history, and now in
my 60th summer, having just completed my 60th spring, and part
of my 60th winter, I fully realize that I have been here now a
lot longer than I will be in the future, and would have to get
to the age of 95 to even last as long in the future as Project
Gutenberg has lasted in the past. Thus this history.
A General Overview
Table of Contents
The Project Gutenberg Timeline
My Own Expectations
The Five Information Ages and
The Five Copyright Laws Passed To Stifle Them
Money
*
The Project Gutenberg Timeline
The high points are easy to map out:
The U.S. Declaration of Independence
The first eBook done burning the midnight oil July 4, 1971.
The History of Democracy Series
[These works were displayed on the walls of countless schools
and malls around the country during the 1970's]
One added each year of the 1970's with help from an anonymous
set of volunteers that even _I_ could never identify, persons
who just seemed to know there was a need, and the work popped
up on various local computers.
The Bible
Our 10th eBook was the again provided by anonymous volunteers
as much of the Project Gutenberg library has been. The Bible
accounted for all of our successful work in the 1980's except
for the preliminary editions of Alice in Wonderland. We were
working on a Complete Shakespeare, but the copyright laws had
been changed with so little publicity that we didn't find out
about it for years, and thus a huge amount of labor was lost.
No Direct Positive Feedback for the First 17 Years
The total lack of interest by the world at large other than a
lot of this anonymous help for the first 17 years.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
The 100th eBook again done burning the midnight oil; December
10, 1993, on the 4th anniversary of my Dad's death: and done
with the aid of a handful of volunteers around the world so I
could honor my father by completing the book in his honor.
Also a debt of gratitude to The World Library who allowed the
use of their copyrighted edition as source material.
[Please note: technically speaking the days of completion of
the books done in all nighters would be the following day; in
the case of honoring my father, the person who completed that
last piece of Shakespeare was in Hawaii so it was technically
still December 10th, but obviously given the lengthy times it
took for file assembly and file transfer in those days it was
obviously December 11th before anyone had the file.]
Dante's Divine Comedy
Our 1,000th book, released in both the original Italian and a
few English translations in August, 1997. For some time book
titles in other languages were intentionally features in book
numbers of multiples of 500 and 1,000 to encourage a language
expansion so Project Gutenberg could provide books to a wider
and wider portion of the world population.
These included
Don Quixote in Spanish as #2,000
Siddhartha in German as #2,500
A L'Ombre Des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, by Proust as #3,000
The Entire French Immortals Series as #4,000
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci as #5,000
Ironia Pozorow, by Maciej hr. Lubienski in Polish as #6,000
The Kalevala, The Finnish National Epic, was #7,000
We went a bit further with #8,000 to do in Africa's honor,
The Slave Trade, Domestic And Foreign,
Why It Exists, And How It May Be Extinguished
The Story Of Vishnu, in Sanskrit, was #9,000
And then back to our roots of The History of Democracy for
The Magna Carta, for our 10,000th eBook, in Latin.
As I write this particular paragraph of this history, it is a
month, to the day, until the 35th anniversary of placing that
first eBook online that was the first step in the encouraging
of the creation and distribution of eBooks that was to become
the hallmark of Project Gutenberg in our mission statements:
"Encourage the Creation and Distribution of eBooks"
"Help Break Down the Bars of Ignorance and Illiteracy"
"Give As Many eBooks to As Many People As Possible"
At this time it still has not been officially decided what is
going to be the 20,000th Project Gutenberg eBook, hopefully a
book that we will complete and have online by July 4, 2006.
*
Note on the numbering and dating of Project Gutenberg eBooks:
During parts of Project Gutenberg's history, I would schedule
all the books to be done in the following year, creating some
index files in which to enter the titles and authors, etc. A
huge surge in our production rate in the earlier days of this
led to several years in which we were ahead of that schedule,
and you will find books with actual release dates ahead of an
official release date that was planned well in advance. This
practice ended with the achievement of our 10,000th eBook.
However, you should also be well advised that the eBooks from
Project Gutenberg of Australia, Project Gutenberg of Europe--
independent organizations--each have their own number systems
and thus when we add their nearly 1,000 eBooks to the totals,
you will find that the 20,000 grand total only includes about
19,000 in the original numbering system. We included the new
Project Gutenberg PrePrints section in the grand 2006 totals,
and those are counted internally, but only received the final
catalogue numbers when they are no longer PrePrints, at least
that's the way it is right now. Given the numbers of changes
to our cataloguing systems over the years, I wouldn't want to
bet that things won't change again, and for the better.
In addition, I should mention The Project Gutenberg Consortia
Center, a collection of collections donated by various others
in eBook production around the world. This site has 75,000+,
which will yield an overall grand total of ~100,000 eBooks on
July 4, 2006.
[My apologies, but John Guagliardo, who runs Consortia Center
sites for us, insists on being very conservative in estimates
of how many eBooks are at http://gutenberg.cc and he will not
let me state for the record the exact number.]
*
I should also mention The World eBook Fair, co-sponsored by a
combination of Project Gutenberg, The World eBook Library and
several other eBook publishers you will be able to find via a
sponsor's link on the main page at http://worldebookfair.com
The world eBook Fair is an effort to present one month a year
of completely free access to all the eBooks we can manage.
These eBooks are coming from at least 100 collections, around
the world, on the following schedule:
1/3 million eBooks in 2006
1/2 million eBooks in 2007
3/4 million eBooks in 2008
ONE million eBooks in 2009
and we hope to make that level of progress with or without an
eBook project continuing from Google, Yahoo or The Library of
Congress though we would certainly encourage them to continue
to redouble their efforts year after year.
However, in all honesty, I must point out that it will take a
lot more than doubling every year or every 18 months:
Let us presume that Google manages to reach 100,000 scans, on
their public servers, by June 14, 2006, 18 months after their
big billion dollar multimedia publicity blitz of December 14,
2004, to reach 1% of their stated goal of 10 million eBooks.
As per Moore's Law, that would yield the following table:
Moore's Law Growth / Google
eBook Totals Dates Doublings Years
00 Dec 14, 2004 0 0
50,000 Jun 14, 2006 1 1.5
100,000 Dec 14, 2007 2 3
200,000 Jun 14, 2009 3 4.5
400,000 Dec 14, 2010 4 6
800,000 Jun 14, 2012 5 7.5
1,600,000 Dec 14, 2013 6 9
3,200,000 Jun 14, 2015 7 10.5
6,400,000 Dec 14, 2016 8 12
12,800,000 Jun 14, 2018 9 13.5
Or, if they doubled every year, instead of every 1 1/2 years:
Moore's Law Growth / Google
Totals Dates Doublings Years
00 Dec 14, 2004 0 0
50,000 Dec 14, 2005 1 1
100,000 Dec 14, 2006 2 2
200,000 Dec 14, 2007 3 3
400,000 Dec 14, 2018 4 4
800,000 Dec 14, 2019 5 5
1,600,000 Dec 14, 2010 6 6
3,200,000 Dec 14, 2011 7 7
6,400,000 Dec 14, 2012 8 8
12,800,000 Dec 14, 2013 9 9
However, some people, even those who say that Moore's Law was
never meant to apply to human powered project, say that their
progress will actually multiply by 10 instead of 2 in Moore's
Law periods, as follows for their 6 year plan:
10x Moore's Law Growth
eBook Totals Dates
00 Dec 14, 2004
100,000 Jun 14, 2006
1,000,000 Dec 14, 2007
10,000,000 Jun 14, 2009
leaving 6 months to spare for 10 years to December 14, 2010.
I'm sure that Google, with over $100 billion, aligned with a
cadre of multibillion dollar libraries such as, The New York
Public Library, Oxford, Harvard, Stanford and Michigan would
certainly be able to scan 10 million books in that period if
they really wanted to.
However, given their track record for their first 18 months,
I worry that they are not taking this project seriously, and
are giving short shrift to what could actually give truth to
their public statement of December 14, 2004:
"This is the day the world changes."
I should also add that there are many people who are pleased
to a much greater degree with their progress than I am and a
similar number of people who seem to be less pleased.
Given my own 35 year history of making eBooks I can only say
that I had both hoped and expected better results.
Yes, I admit it, my hopes and expectations are high.
My Own Hopes and Expectations
My own ideal of eBooks is what you would get if you sat down
at your computer and typed in a few pages every day, week by
week, until you finished the book, then proofread it several
times to get it to 99.9% level of accuracy and then sent the
book off to a few of your friends to proofread with eyes not
your own to find the errors you missed more than once.
This should result in an eBook that exceeds the standard set
by The Library of Congress for eBooks in the 1990's.
Obviously there was no other way to create eBooks in 1971 as
when the whole process of creating eBooks readable by humans
and computers began because there were no automated tools in
place to assist us as we have today.
Personally, I think it is now time to increase the standards
to perhaps 99.97% or 99.99%, not a big change, and certainly
within the realms of reality.
Given these expectations that I harbored for several decades
before eBooks finally struck the fancy of others, you might,
just possibly, be able to understand my reaction to Google's
announcement of December 14, 2004.
I was elated!
Here, finally, was going to come the $100 billion dollar new
enterprise that would be able to finish what we had started!
Obviously Google was going to create an online library where
anyone in the world could read any of 10 million books, from
some of the greatest library collections in the world.
However, it didn't work out that way.
It didn't work out that way several times over.
1. We never got any public announcement of books being done,
catalogues made available, or anything else of the like, so a
person who wanted to see what Google was doing had nothing in
the way of the same kind of opportunity as with a "bricks and
mortar library."
2. The books we did manage to find were not available for an
easy download to our own systems. In fact, upon examination,
it appeared that Google had actually taken actions to PREVENT
people from downloading the books.
3. It turned out that Google Print Library books were not in
one single computer file, but that the text you search was in
one file, while the pages you actually could read were in one
or more other files, often one file per page, and with a kind
of invisible file overlaying them, so that if you downloaded,
or tried to download, the page, you got a blank file.
4. The text you could search was available only in "snippet"
form. . .literally a couple lines of a book were all you got,
and then when you wanted to look at the book, you were sent a
whole different route to different files containing images of
the words you had just seen in plain computer text, words you
could previously have cut and pasted into your own computer--
but now which were in a non-portable format.
[Note: it turns out that many of the names used are misnomer
after misnomer. . .Google's Print Library could not print and
was not a library. . .Adobe's "Portable File Documents" would
turn out not to be very portable at all, but certainly moreso
that a graphical representation in .gif or .jpg format, etc.]
So, my "Great Expectations" of an eBook library that could be
written on a single DVD and snailmailed for one stamp via the
first class mail system [or even less at book rate], were not
coming true via The Google Print Library as announced in that
December 14, 2004 media blitz, nor from the renamed version:
Google Book Search which was immediately relabeled by Google
"Google Book Search is a means for helping users discover
books, not to read them online and/or download them."
Thus we had both the reality that Google was not providing an
electronic library the like of which they described via their
billion dollar publicity campaign, nor now was defined in the
official words quoted above.
I won't go into detail here about the authors and publishers,
who took Google to court for concentrating on the copyrighted
materials instead of public domain materials, or how Google's
books have changed even more, as per public pressure, to keep
at least one foot in the door of eBooks as I envisioned them,
other than to say that I continue to hope Google, Yahoo, etc.
will finally come to the point of realizing that publicity of
the kind the received from their early efforts might be a lot
less than the kind they would receive if they actually set an
electronic library free to be downloaded with their blessing.
Yes I understand the Masters of Business Administration logic
of wanting to force everyone to come to Google every time the
need arises to look something up in one of these books, and a
certain amount of advertising revenue is generated whenever a
"hit" takes place. . .that's lots of money.
But I also understand that the just plain "good will" that is
generated by giving these books away is even greater.
Just as Project Gutenberg once got credit for giving away ALL
of the eBooks in the world [we constantly received the errors
or all the other publishers], Google could easily have made a
similar impact, by outproducing Project Gutenberg, many times
over, and getting credit from the masses for all eBooks, even
without making any statements to that effect.
It could literally have been on the order of Carnegie library
efforts that were so big exactly 100 years ago today. For an
awfully long time, millions of people thought that Carnegie's
public library program had built every public library.
THAT is the way promote books and libraries, not lock them up
in ways that prevent people from having access.
By the way, Google wasn't the first to make this mistake.
eBooks for the Elite. . .or for Humanity at Large?
Oxford made the same mistake with The Oxford Text Archive, in
which they attempted to collect all the world's eBooks in one
collection that was as exclusive as possible, and to claim it
as free to anyone who wanted to archive their eBooks there.
However even for something as freely available as Gutenberg's
Alice in Wonderland they charged $45 and limited distribution
to 9-track reel to reel computer tape, just to keep the books
out of the hands of the riffraff.
In the end they were so exclusive that they priced themselves
right out of the eBook marketplace, when they should have had
the whole thing to themselves, if they hadn't been so greedy.
"Those who do not study history, are condemned to repeat it."
The Oxford Text Archive wanted to be something the common man
or woman could not and would not use, they got their wish.
This is what happens when you try to be too elitist.
My own Project Gutenberg efforts are just the opposite with a
priority to bring books and literacy to the masses just as in
the days of Johannes Gutenberg's press, when numbers of books
owned by the average person rose above 0 for the first time--
my goal is to raise the number of libraries owned by the same
average person above 0 for the first time.
The average public library has about 30,000 books.
We are currently building a single-sided, single-layered DVD,
and right now it has 20,000 books on it, and is only 2/3 full
of books, so the final edition should have as many books as a
modern public library has.
These common single-sided, single-layered DVDs were available
for just 17 cents the last time I bought them in a store, and
together with a book rate stamp for each one would mean I can
mail 100 of these to separate 100 addresses for $50. However
I should add that if you use heavier envelopes, the weight is
going to go over one ounce, and the stamps will cost more.
In a few years I predict there will be any number of DVDs out
there containing 30,000 eBooks, and even more as the standard
becomes dual-sided and dual-layered DVDs that can hold eBooks
at four times the number of pages.
Can you imagine a single DVD containing 100,000 eBooks?!?!?!?
And mailing these to anyone you know for just 50 cents?
*
That's the kind of thing _I_ had in mind when I started doing
eBooks, and it is possible right now, though the dual-layered
dual-sided DVDs are more expensive right now per side, so the
prediction I am making is still for a few years from now.
However, right now blank DVDs are about the same price as CDs
and that will eventually happen with the dual-sided & layered
DVDs as well, particularly when the new higher density DVD is
in the major marketplaces.
Then DVDs containing 100,000 eBooks will indeed be common.
*
There you have my general overview of "The History of Project
Gutenberg," and I will fill in more details as time goes on a
little more complete with some perspective on why the initial
items produced were so small by comparison as most readers of
this are probably unaware of just how limited computer drives
and bandwidth were, back in the 1970's, and also some mention
of why our first effort into very large books like a Complete
Works of Shakespeare were counteracted by the voiding of that
copyright law we had started out with, and replacement of the
law with a new law that eliminated one million books from the
total we could use in Project Gutenberg.
Obviously my own view of putting entire libraries in the hand
of anyone who wants them has been countermanded by legalistic
corporate lobbying as well as the machinations of elitists of
the nature of Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, etc.
My own goal is bring all this to the masses, and research for
just a few minutes will tell you of centuries of efforts by a
cartel of publishers starting with The Stationers Guild later
known as The Stationers Company, all the way to their modern-
day heirs, The World Intellectual Property Organization.
I close this introduction with a comparison of the first four
Information Ages to the current Information Age of today.
For those who want this is more detail, please see my blog at
http://pglaf.org/hart
where one of the main essays is on The Five Information Ages.
The Five Information Ages
and
The Five Copyright Laws Passed To Stifle Them
Obviously Project Gutenberg is named after the inventor of an
elementary fundamental building block of Information Ages for
all time, Herr Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of moveable type,
the foundation of both the printing revolution, and the later
Scientific Revolution, and thus The Industrial Revolution.
However, what most of you probably didn't know before Project
Gutenberg essays on the subject, is that the first copyrights
were created simply to stop The Gutenberg Press and to renew,
or restore, the monopoly such scribes and stationers had had,
all the way back to time immemorial.
For those of us in the United States the political process of
counteracting technological breakthroughs via manipulation of
copyright laws might be much more obvious.
In 1830, the first high speed steam printing press patent was
issued right alongside an expiration of the 1st United States
copyright ever issued starting back around 1790.
For those who had enjoyed a monopoly of publications in early
days of the United States, this was totally unacceptable, and
a huge effort was mounted to change the copyright laws before
any new publishers could buy these new printing presses in an
effort to create inexpensive reprints of these books.
Thus the rights of the public to the public domain were dead,
for a second time, stifling the effects of the steam presses,
just as thoroughly as the first United Kingdom copyrights had
reduced the number of titles available from 6,000 to 600 back
when The Stationers Company first outlawed all such Gutenberg
presses that were outside their purview.
The U.S. Civil War interrupted this process or it might be in
continuation as the 1830 Copyright Act allowed the copyrights
to eventually expire, but with the advent of electric presses
at the turn of the century, the legalistic maneuverings would
be revived and the 1909 copyright act served the same purpose
a third time, yet again stopping an impending revolution in a
world of inexpensive republishing of public domain works.
The Xerox machine received the same treatment in 1976 and the
Internet was responded to via the 1998 U.S. Copyright Act.
In just the 89 years from 1909 to 1998 the U.S. Copyright Act
was amended again and again and again to kill off revolutions
in publishing from electric presses, Xerox machines, and then
finally the Internet as copyrights were extended from average
periods of about 30 years in 1900 to 95 years in 2000.
The odds of living long enough to legally copy anything later
in life that you had seen originally published in childhoods,
virtually dropped to 0% for children today from expectation a
child could legitimately and legally have a century ago.
In plain terms, even without any further copyright extension,
the average child born today, even in the countries with high
life expectancies, will never live long enough to republish a
single example of anything published in their lifetime.
We are now legally cut off from republishing the culture your
life included being published from birth to death. . .it will
all be in the hands of Big Brother.
*
Money
At least one of my most vocal critics has tried to convince a
number of people that I do eBooks for the money and that I am
manipulating the Project Gutenberg volunteers for a profit.
Of course, that very same person has publicly said that money
should be the top priority of Project Gutenberg.
At the current time I have not received a PGLAF paycheck from
my services to Project Gutenberg for over three years.
This selfsame critic has also criticized John Guagliardo, who
has run the Project Gutenberg Consortia Center on his own, in
terms of both his own time and his own money for years.
I am not sure the total amount of money either of us has made
for our years of labor would equal a median nation income for
the same period. . .but. . .if either John or I ever do get a
fortune in return for our work, I think we will deserve it.
On the same note, I should add that receiving just a penny in
return for every eBook given away would generate enough money
to buy out Donald Trump.
The world population is coming up on 2/3 of 10 billion. 1.5%
of that total is 100 million people. Thus if the average one
of the Project Gutenberg eBooks reaches 1.5% worldwide, there
would be a total of 2 trillion copies given away just of that
20,000 eBooks that Project Gutenberg has published.
2 trillion pennies is 20 billion dollars.
If we add in all the eBooks Project Gutenberg has republished
from other eBook publishers, we approach 100,000 eBooks and a
total of 10 trillion eBooks given away if the average one may
get to 1.5% of the population.
10 trillion pennies is 100 billion dollars.
And this is only counting up to July 4, 2006, and again only
counting the eBooks Project Gutenberg made or republished.
If we count the 1/3 million World eBook Fair books presented
on July 4, 2006, and if those reach just 1.5% percent of the
world population, that would be 33.3 trillion copies.
33.3 trillion pennies is 1/3 trillion dollars.
And that is just for the First World eBook Fair, just wait a
bit for the next three to take place and those figures above
will translate to:
1/3 million eBooks in 2006 yields 1/3 trillion dollars
1/2 million eBooks in 2007 yields 1/2 trillion dollars
3/4 million eBooks in 2008 yields 3/4 trillion dollars
ONE million eBooks in 2009 yields ONE TRILLION DOLLARS
just valuing each copy at one penny and reaching just a 1.5%
portion of the world population with the average eBook.
*
However, I have tried to keep money out of the equation with
respect to the reality of Project Gutenberg, as it is a very
important issue to prove that eBooks can be created en masse
without any real financial support. This keeps eBooks in an
entirely free realm, from start to finish, without any needs
for multibillion dollar corporations such as Google, Yahoo!,
or even governments; though it would certainly be nice if an
assortment of these, or of schools, actually acted on vision
statements that SAID that they are interested in the general
welfare of the population as a whole.
A Few More Comments On Money
While on the topic on money, I should mention that our money
isn't really based on anything much more sophisticated in an
overall point of view than that monetary system of Indians a
Dutch man gave "$24 worth of beads and trinkets" in exchange
for Manhattan Island.
Our own "beads and trinkets" consist of gold and silver from
the old days, along with platinum and iridium, etc., from an
assortment of newer items on the list.
Let's face it, any spacefaring ship that landed here is more
than likely to have come across some number of gold, silver,
platinum and iridium asteroids in their travels and would be
thus able to buy anything they wanted from us in exchange of
a few "beads and trinkets" they picked up along the way.
It is fairly common knowledge that all of the heavy elements
including even the iron in our blood, were created in novas,
the explosions of stars billions of miles away.
I should add that some of the iron is actually made in stars
before they reach the nova stage, and thus probably we could
find examples of some heavier elements in very dense stars.
But the fact is that we still value shiny objects such as an
assortment of precious metals and precious stones, still the
basic "beads and trinkets" of primitive money.
*
A Brief History Project Gutenberg
The First Step to eLibraries, July 4, 1971
To put it simply: I was the right person in the right place
at the right time with the right friends.
There was a LOT of luck involved in making Project Gutenberg
and I would warn you to be quite suspicious of anyone who is
claiming to have started such a project without lots of luck
being a major factor.
I grew up in a house full of books and electronics: luck.
My brother's best friend was a computer operator: luck.
MY best friend was an operator on the same one: more luck.
This was one of the first computers on the Internet: luck.
I just happened to be there when it happened: more luck.
I already knew how to run a TeleType machine: more luck.
I figured out how to run the computer by hanging around.
They gave me my own computer account July 4, 1971: luck.
A copy of The Declaration of Independence in my bag: luck!
When I wondered what I could do to repay the $100 million in
my new computer account I stopped to eat while I thought and
thought about what I should do with all that computer power,
and when I opened my bookbag and shook out my munchies I saw
the copy of The Declaration of Independence tossed in by the
grocery bagger at the store: luck!
The proverbial light bulb went off over my head. . .!!!!!!!
And the rest, along with a LOT more luck, and a lot of work,
as they way. . .is history.
*
The first 17 years of my work on eBooks was boring.
The first years of the Internet were boring, too.
Anyone who says they were exciting must have been insiders--
with a totally different perspective--as there was nothing--
literally nothing--of interest to the general public.
Therefore I am skipping over all those years in which I made
some little efforts at making eBooks without a single word--
not one--in response to the idea of eBooks other than that I
was crazy to want to put Shakespeare in a computer.
Remember, this is my own perspective, I didn't know all that
was going on in other parts of the world, though I will make
an effort to fill in those gaps to some degree here.
Thus we jump from the early 1970's to the second half of the
1980's with just a heartfelt nod to Steves Jobs and Wozniak,
the inventors of the personal computer, and Bill Gates, IBM,
and the IBM cloners who brought PCs to the mainstream.
Here is the briefest of histories of that period.
My own first computers were cheapies like Atari's, and a few
4040 chips that I never got around to building into anything
at all, and then, finally a couple second hand CP/M machines
that turned out to actually be useful in that I could call a
lot of other computers with them, though at great expense as
I learned when I received my first phone bill afterwards.
In addition I got WordStar with each of those machines, thus
starting my career of banging away at my own keyboard to see
what I could create on my own computers.
I eventually built my first "gray market" IBM machine, for a
whopping total of $3300, even using nearly all scrap parts--
and the conversion to DOS from CP/M really got me hooked, as
I could write my own batch files, to automate nearly all the
processes I used on a daily or weekly basis.
In addition I got Word Perfect, which turned out to have the
best phone support in the world, in addition to being one of
the best programs in the world, and I was off to the races--
so to speak--as eBooks suddenly became much easier to make--
via the macro commands you could write in Word Perfect and a
host of other features that made creating eBooks a breeze up
to the point of doing the final save. . .that was slow.
In addition, around the same time I became a BBS SysOP for a
somewhat famous BBS [Bulletin Board System] and thus learned
a LOT about communicating with people around the world a lot
before I got back on the Internet [see the next section].
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