The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter February 25, 2004
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 1
In this week's Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) News and Comment
3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
4) Mailing list information
Editorial
Hello,
Listening to the radio yesterday I heard a song the first line of
which ran "What are words worth?". Two possible answers to that
question appear in this weeks newsletter. In a piece to celebrate the
anniversary of his birth on 27th Feb, Gali looks at the life of
Johannes Gutenberg. We have another instalment of the PG A to Z, and a
small preview of what looks to be a very exciting event in the life of
DP-EU tomorrow - in the words of another song "The revolution will not
be televised".
Happy reading,
Alice
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2) News and Comment
PRoject Gutenberg rules in Europe.
To complete his trip to Europe Michael Hart is taking part tomorrow in
a talk in at the European Parliament in Brussels.
Abstract "Project Gutenberg: An Effort To Give Away A Quadrillion eBooks By 2015".
Michael S. Hart will present a brief history of Project Gutenberg's
efforts to bring electronic libraries to the masses via a
Neo-Industrial Revolution. He will then make predictions concerning
the next several decades, including eBooks, eLibraries, copyright and
machine translation: including million eBook libraries one can carry
with a laptop, billions of Internet users, and the future of copyright
and the public domain.
Project Gutenberg has published more than 11.zip free e-books like the
Bible, Alice in Wonderland, works from Shakespeare, Dante. etc.. In
its effort to set up a Dutch mirror site of these e-books,
Vrijschrift.org Foundation concluded it is a tricky thing to do. In
fact legislation around copyrights makes it impossible to publish old
European public domain works, digitized by European volunteers on an
European server in a straight forward way. In short:
Current copyright legislation is preventing access for European
citizens to their own cultural heritage on Project Gutenberg.
This was the reason Member of the European Parliament Johanna Boogerd
(D66-ELDR) asked questions about this issue to CEC . While in Europe
Michael Hart will meet Johanna Boogerd to talk about these issues with
her and other MEP's.
"There is a lot at stake" says Yee Whu. "A constant tendency to extend
copyright terms will finally result in the extermination of the Public
Domain. Fortunately there has come resistance against the pro
copyright and (software) patent lobby. MEP's expressed their concern
clearly by voting against software patents. Now they have to resist
the US and WIPO pressure to introduce eternal copyrights. This
influence could result in the destruction of Europe's cultural
heritage, but the EU is strong enough to counter it, that is, if they
really want to..."
Distributed Proofreaders Europe to make official mass posting
Distributed Proofreaders Europe is hoping to make its first official
mass posting to Project Gutenberg tomorrow. It is hoped that this will
mark the end of DP-EU's testing period, and their appearance in EU
parliament.
Whilst the list of texts hasn't been finalised as yet, we are in a
position to give you a few ideas of what is likely to be included.
Languages: these are likely to include Serbian, Finnish, Norwegian,
French, English, Italian and Portuguese.
Possible books could include: La Campagna del 1796 I, Wanderings by
southern waters, eastern Aquitaine and Travels through the empire of Morocco.
Statistical Roundup
11574 Total 02/25/04 Week #7 (50/309)
139 New This Week
115 New Last Week
95.29 Weekly Average
355 New This Month
667 New This Year
13.34 Average per day this year
4347 Projected Total for this year
64 New this week last year (02/17/03)
249 New this month last year (Feb)
422 New this year last year (2003)
$ 0.86 Trillion dollar cost/book
$ 1.40 Trillion dollar cost/book last year
7165 Etexts This Week Last Year
7 Production Weeks this Year 45 to go.
50 Production Days this Year 309 to go.
2 Production Months this Year
2425 eBooks in last 6 months (08/27/03 - 02/25/04) 26 weeks (34 - 7)
13.40 Daily Average for the last 6 months (181 production days)
1984 eBooks in the prior 6 months (02/17/03 - 08/20/03) 26 weeks (7 - 33)
10.78 Daily Average for the prior 6 months (184 production days)
5756 eBooks in the last 18 months (08/27/02 - 02/25/04) 78 weeks (34 - 7)
Radio Gutenberg Update
www.gutenberg.net/audio
channel 1 - Sherlock Holmes "The Sign of Four"
channel 2 - Robert Sheckley's "Bad Medicine"
Both are high quality live readings from the collection.
Testing of Radio Gutenberg audio books on demand is currently taking
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3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
A to Z - V
Well, there'll be nothing here then. Oh, how wrong can you be. Of
course there is, and it's pretty good. V is dominated by that well
known author 'Various', and it's in this part of Project Gutenberg we
find the many collections, several of which we have covered
previously. You can find out more about Atlantic Monthly and Scientific
American Supplement on the newsletter website. There are several more
collections accumulating in this section, such as Blackwood's
Edinburgh Magazine, Punchinello and The Mirror of Literature, Amusement,
and Instruction; we will be covering these indepth in future
newsletters. You can also find a full collection of US Presidential
Inagural Addresses. Jules Verne and Voltaire also feature heavily, one
text that might get downloaded over in newsletter towers this week -
Edmund Venables 'The Life Of John Bunyan'. It would be slightly
remiss of me (and several people would kill me) if I didn't mention
Margaret Vandercook - The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill!
In books we have several compilations of verse: 'Verse and Prose for
Beginners in Reading Selected from English and American Literature',
'Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman', 'Verse Of Alfred Lichtenstein',
'Verses'by Susan Coolidge, 'Verses 1889-1896' by Rudyard Kipling,
'Verses And Rhymes By The Way', 'Verses And Translations'. You can
also take a voyage: 'Voyage Au Centre De La Terre' - French by Jules
Verne, 'Voyage d'un Habitant de la Lune à Paris à la Fin du XVIIIe
Siècle' - French by Pierre Gallet, 'Voyage Of Captain Popanilla',
'Voyage Of The Beagle', 'Voyage Of The Hoppergrass', 'Voyage of The
Paper Canoe; a geographical journey of 2500 miles, from Quebeck to the
Gulf of Mexico, during the years 1874-5' - to name but a few.
Read an etext - see the world!
Johannes Gutenberg
At the beginning it was the Word. Then came letters, fonts and weekly
newspapers. What will come later on we do not know. What we do know is
that a lot of rains have passed since an unsung genius took a stone
with awkward hand and made a clumsy picture on the wall of a cave,
trying to transfer ephemeral information into the fixed material
object. And since then humans have been constantly busy with
inventing ways to store, transfer and hide this information. Writing
was a serious thing, very close to magic and to be literally meant
to have power. It was a rare and profitable profession. Since 7th
Century Chinese had carved the text on the wooden plates, making
relatively cheap printed books - Confucian and Buddhist texts, math
and poetry were made in this way all over the Empire. In
the middle of 11th Century Pi Sheng created movable print. The
small pieces of burned clay, each contains one Chinese character, were
glued to the iron plate forming a page of a text. Then they were
easily detached and reconfigured to make another text.
And then?
Nothing happened.
Nothing exciting really happened for about three hundred years until
William Caxton utilised the printing press for printing in quantity.
So in the respectable patrician family of merchant Friele Gensfleisch
zu Laden and his wife Else Wirich, was born a son, christened Johannes
Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. It was in their residence in
Mainz, called 'Hof zum Gutenberg' somewhere between 1390 and 1400. We,
Westerns, enjoy round numbers, so it was decided that literate
humanity wants to celebrate the 600th birthday of Gutenberg in the year
2000 A.C. So be it, since it doesn't really matter when ? the most
important that he definitely was born. From the father line he could
inherit talent and knowledge in metal working ? Gänsfleisch'es were
masters of archiepiscopal mint and had a seat at the assizes in
forgery classes. And from mother side it was probably relatively long
life and knowledge about pottery. Else Wyrich was a daughter of a
burgher of Mainz, Werner Wyrich zum steinern Krame (at the sign of the
pottery shop).
The life of Johannes Gutenberg is slightly obscured by his
ordinaryness, very little information about him exists, what we would
do without legal notes, court sentences and other records? Many even now
obscure famous lives would be completely unknown without it ? take
Shakespeare for example. And certainly this is true about Johannes:
his biography is almost entirely based on court documents [Hurrah for
bureaucracy! - Ed]. In the year 1420 he was first mentioned in connection
with the settlement of his father's will, making him legally of age,
at least fifteen years old, according to the practice of Rhineland at
that time. His family is believed to have left Mainz 1411
together with other patrician families due to a dispute with the
guilds about tax and custom privileges. They might move first to
Eltville where Else had a house and then to Strasbourg. If this
was so, then a certain Johannes de Alta villa (Eltville) that was
immatriculated in 1418/1419 at the University of Erfurt, could be our
Johann. Anyhow but young Johannes should be not only literal but also
well educated person - his Latin was undoubtedly good since he was
able to tackle such an ambitious undertaking as printing the Latin
Vulgate Bible. In 1434 we know for sure that he was in Strasbourg,
where he instigated the arrest of an official of the city of Mainz,
for non-payment of an annuity which was due to him. Another document
confirms that Johannes was trying to have fun in Strasbourg as well -
in 1436/7 he was accused by Ennelin zu der yserin Thüre of having
broken a promise to marry her. In 1439 the records about legal disput
between Gutenberg and the brothers Georg and Klaus Dritzehn teach us a
lot of interesting facts - that he joined the guild of goldsmiths,
than he had pupils in 'the polishing and grinding of precious stones'
and that they made pilgrim's mirrors. (Pilgrims hoped to catch some of
the blessed light from the relics with these salvation mirrors and
thus catch the power of the relics and take this home with them). In
these records, Gutenberg appears distinctly as the technical originator and
manager of the business. One of witnesses states that, in his capacity
of goldsmith, he had supplied in 1436 "printing requisites" to the
value of 100 gulden; mention is also made of a press constructed by
Konrad Saspach, a turner, with peculiar appliances (screws). The name
of the secret art was not given, and we can only guess - why did he need
those requisites and the press. On October 17th, 1448, Johannes
borrowed 150 guilders from his cousin Arnold Gelthus.
One interesting item from http://prodigi.bl.uk/gutenbg 'In a letter
of 12 March 1455 Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, wrote to
Juan de Carvajal, the cardinal for whom we worked, and mentioned that
at a political meeting held in Frankfurt 15-28 October 1454, a
marvelous man had been present either showing part of his work on the
Bible or, perhaps, talking about it. He explained that the book had
such neat letters that Carvajal could read it without his glasses. By
March 1455 Piccolomini had seen several gatherings of the Bible and he
reported that all copies had been sold.'.
"Let it be known by all unto whom these presents shall come that in
the year of 1455, in the third indiction, on Thursday, 6 November, in
the first year of the pontificate of Calixtus III, between eleven and
twelve noon in the refectory of the Discalced Franciscan friars in
Mainz ...", started the lawsuit record on 6 November 1455, Ulrich
Helmasperger, clerk of the Bishopric of Bamberg, royal notary and
certified public recorder at the Court of the Archbishop of Mainz.. It
is widely known now as Helmasperger Instrument and would make a nice
addition to PG collection maybe? the images and translations are widely
available over Internet
(http://www.gutenbergdigital.de/gudi/eframes/index.htm has very nice
copy of it for example). And this is the only contemporary account of
the business relations between Gutenberg and his companion Johannes
Fust, a merchant of Mainz and of Gutenberg's invention, the "Work of
the Books". This account of the legal proceedings documents that the
citizen of Mainz, Johannes Fust, swore the following under oath:
He had lent Gutenberg the sum of 1550 guilders which he himself had
had to borrow at an interest rate of 6%. In his view the money he lent
Gutenberg which was not used for their mutual benefit for the Work of
the Books was a loan and thus he demanded that the interest on this
loan be refunded to him. The Instrument briefly discusses the first
legal complaint - the demand for repayment of the money - and
describes the judgement which was unfavorable for Gutenberg.
The Instrument does not mention the final judgement - Fust's demand
that the partnership with Gutenberg be dissolved and the consequences
of this.
Apparently Gutenberg lost the case, and most of the printed later books
didn't bear his name. But it didn't matter - the process
had started. The typographic virus spread fast, so at the end of 15th
century there were more than 1000 printers across Europe.
In 1458 Gutenberg defaulted on debts incurred in Strasbourg in
1442. This may be read as an addional sign that he had lost the court
case and was in financial difficulties.
17 January 1465 Gutenberg was granted a pension (clothes, wine, grains
and house) as a courtier of the Prince-Archbishop of Mainz.
26 February 1468 Konrad Humery mentioned that he was the beneficiary
of Gutenberg's will and had received some material relating to
printing.
Geoffrey Chaucer (http://gutenberg.net/etext95/troic10.txt;
http://gutenberg.net/etext04/chcfl10.txt), English poet of 14th
century, one the most educated persons of his time, had about 60 books
in his bibliotheca. Project Gutenberg has already more than 11.zip
titles and that is only the beginning.
Cookery Club
The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Cook's Decameron:
A Study in Taste:
Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes
by Mrs. W. G. Water
During the research for last weeks A to Z I came across this text
again. Now, being in need of antipasti recipes I decided to take
another look at this text to see just what was in it.
The book is divided into two parts, the first being a narrative in the
form of a diary of a cookery school. The author being forced to both
learn the dishes and teach them to others due to a shortage of
suitable staff. The second part is a compendium of the recipes and
menus mentioned during the first. The text makes a point of not just
looking at the more expensive dishes of the time, but also cheaper and
vegetable dishes, along with, the editors' favourite part,
desserts. Unfortunately, antipasti isn't mentioned, but who needs that
now?
"One Iced Zabajone, table six"
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Credits
Thanks this week to Brett and George for the numbers and the
booklists. Gali, Greg, Michael and Larry Wall, plus the newsletter
backroom staff. Entertainment for the workers provided as usual by BBC
6Music and Andrew Collins. Special thank you to Tina Weymouth without
whom words would be worth a lot less.
pgweekly_2004_02_25_part_1.txt
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