List of Participants

List of Participants

Communication Group

	A Study of Direct to Home Television Supervisor: Prof. Md. Abdul Matin	Md. Aminul Islam	Md. Shakil Bhuiyan,	Atif Iqbal
	Design and Analysis of a Multiband Dual Feed Axially Symmetric Cassegrain Antenna System Supervisor: Prof. Md. Abdul Matin	Sajid M. Choudhury	Md. Asif Zaman	Md. Gaffar
	Detection of Characteristic Points and T-Wave Alternans in ECG Supervisor: Prof. Md. Kamrul Hasan	Jubair Sieed	Md. Abdullah Arafat
	Design and Fabrication of an FM Broadcasting Transmitter Supervisor: Prof. Saiful Islam	Md. A. Rahman	Md. Niazul I. Khan	Md. Ifte K. Amin
	ECG Beat Analysis Using Discrete Wavelet Coefficients Supervisor: Prof. Md. Aynal Haque	Azfar Adib	Md. Ridwanul Alam	Md. S. Rahman
	EMD-Chaos Based Analysis of EEG Signal for Early Seizure Detection Supervisor: Dr. Mohammed Imamul Hassan Bhuiyan	Syed Tarek Shahriar	Aurangozeb	H. M. S. Hassan
	Face Recognition Based on the Discrete Cosine Transform Supervisors: Dr. Shaikh A. Fattah & Dr. Mohammed Imamul Hassan Bhuiyan	Hafiz Imtiaz	Tahsina Farah
	Guiding Properties of Side-hole Optical Fiber Considering Stress-optic Effects Supervisor: Dr. Md. Shah Alam	Shama Naz Islam	Kaniz Fatima	Shamima Najnin
	Modal Analysis of PANDA Fiber Using Finite Element Method Supervisor: Dr. Md. Shah Alam	Sanjib Das	Anindya Jyoti Dutta	N. Patwary
	Performance Analysis of Free Space Optical CDMA System Over Atmospheric Turbulence Channel Supervisor: Dr. Sattya Prasad Majumder	S. H. Choudhury	Tanveer A. Bhuiyan	Asif Al-Rasheed
	Performance Limitations of a SIMO OFDM Wireless Link Impaired by Carrier Frequency Offset, Timing Jitter, Phase Noise and Fading Supervisor: Dr. Satya Prasad Majumder	Sameer A. K. Mojlsh	Md. Jarez Miah	Mehedi Hasan
	Sequential Algorithm for Ventricular Tachycardia and Fibrillation Detection Based on Mean Signal Strength and Low-order EMD Functions Supervisor: Dr. Md. Kamrul Hasan	Emran Mohammad Abu Anas
	Wavelet Based ECG Signal Compression Supervisor: Dr. Newaz M. Syfur Rahim	Sayed A. Mamun	Suman Saha	Md. M. Alam

 

Electronics Group

	Analytical Expression for Effective Surface Recombination Velocity of an n-n+-metal Structure Supervisor: Dr. M. M. Shahidul Hassan	Md. S. Rahman	Imad Imran Faruque			Md. I. Momtaz
	Detection and Localization of Faults in Analog Integrated Circuits Supervisor: Dr. A.B.M. Harun-Ur-Rashid	Avijit Saha	Fahim Rahman			Rubayet-Al-Maruf
	Analyzing Absorption Spectra and Determination of Chirality (n, m) of Singlewalled Carbon Nanotubes Supervisor: Dr. Sharif Mohammad Mominuzzaman	Md Monzur Morshed	Shamsul A. Siddiqui			Raju Sinha
	Development of Improved I-V Characteristics Models for Nanometer Size MESFETs Supervisor: Dr. Md. Shafiqul Islam	Muhymin Islam	Md Raziul Hasan			S. M. N. Islam
	Dual Stack Method: A Novel Approach to Low Leakage and Area Efficient VLSI Design Supervisor: Dr. Md. Shafiqul Islam	Nuzhat Mansur		Naila Tasneem
	Electron Distribution in a Non-uniformly Doped NPN Transistor Supervisor: Dr. M. M. Shahidul Hassan	Rummana Bari	Nitu Syed
	Electrostatic and Transport Characterization of Nanoscale SOI FinFETs Using Self-Consistent Analysis Supervisor: Dr. Quazi Deen Mohd. Khosru	Raisul Islam	Md. Zunaid Baten			Emran Md. Amin
	Fabrication of Novel Shaped Hollow Silicon Microneedles by Optimized Process for Biomedical Applications Supervisor: Dr. Md. Shofiqul Islam	Md. Tanjil Shivan	Md. Nurul Abser			Md. Nurul Islam
	Model of Impurity Redistribution during Solid Phase Epitaxy of Silicon Supervisors: Dr. M. Quamrul Huda and Dr. Farseem M. Mohammedy	Md. Sohel Mahmood	Sabih Uddin Omar			A A. I. Ahmed
	Performance Optimization of Erbium Doped Silicon Nanocrystal towards the Development of Silicon Laser Supervisors: Dr. M. Quamrul Huda and Dr. Farseem M. Mohammedy	Md. Tanbir Hasan	Sudip Kumar Saha			Md. Shakil Akter
	Raman Spectral Analysis of Nitrogen incorporated Fullerene (C60) Thin Films Supervisor: Dr. S. M.Mominuzzaman	Ahmed Zubair	A. N. M. Ashrafuzzaman
	Design and Analysis of Ultra Wideband Integrated Dipole Antenna on Silicon Substrate for On-chip Wireless Interconnect Supervisor: Dr. A. B. M. Harun-Ur-Rashid	Sonjoy Deb Roy	Maruf N. Ahmed		Md. A. Rahman

 

Computer Group

	Design of a Low Cost ICU System for Continuous Monitoring of ECG, SPO2 and Temperature and Measurement of Blood Pressure Using Oscillometric Method Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Ali Choudhury	Md. T. B. Tarek		Md Sharif Uddin	Nusrat Afrin
	Design of a Low Cost ICU System for Real-time Monitoring of ECG, Oxygen Rate, Temperature and Blood Pressure Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Ali Choudhury	M M H Chowdhury		Md. Jahirul Sikdar	A S M M Jameel
	Development of a Touch-typing Training Software for Bangla Word Processing Supervisor: Dr. Md. Saifur Rahman	Mohammad Sadat Uddoula Pahlowan
	FPGA Implementation of Real Time Acoustic Noise Suppression by Spectral Subtraction Techniques Supervisor: Dr. A. B. M. Harun-Ur-Rashid	Saad Md. J Haider	Upal Mahbub		Tauhidur Rahman
	Measurement of Electrical Quantities using PIC18F4550 Microcontroller Supervisor: Dr. Newaz M. Syfur Rahim	Md. Sakib Hasan	Suddha Sourav		Md. Arifin Arif
	Network Based Automatic Water Level Detection and Control of Irrigation Pumps Supervisor: Dr. Md. Nasim Ahmed Dewan	Noor e A Siddiqui	S Bhattacharjee		Chingla M Marma
	Network Based Industrial Temperature Monitoring and Control Supervisor: Dr. Md. Nasim Ahmed Dewan	Md. Abir Khan	Kazi Yezdan
	Network Based Line Current Monitoring and Control Supervisor: Dr. Md. Nasim Ahmed Dewan	Bikash Das	Mahbubur Rahman		Shohagh Hossain
	Photovoltaic Maximum Power Point Tracking Battery Charge Controller Supervisor: Dr. Kazi Mujibur Rahman	Md. Imran Khan	M. Raihanul Islam		Md. Z Mozumder
	Segmentation of Printed Bangla Characters Using Structural Properties of Bangla Script Supervisor: Dr. Md. Saifur Rahman	Md I S Chowdhury	Barnali Dey		Faiza Afroz Faria

 

Power Group

	A Fast Method to Determine the Capacitor Bank Size for Reactive Power Compensation in Power System Supervisor: Dr. S. Shahnawaz Ahmed	Md. Jahid Hasan		Nowrin Hasan Chamok			Shakiruzzaman Khan
	Design & Analysis of Power Factor Improvement of Non-linear Loads Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Jahangir Alam	Sharif Taufique Atique		Rumman H. Chowdhury			Abu Sayeem Mia
	Design and Construction of a Underground Power Transmission and Distribution Cable Fault Locator Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Ali Choudhury	S.K. Razibul Islam		Md. Toufiq E Elahi			Md. Asiful Islam
	Design of an SVC for Enhancement of Real Power Transfer Capability of a Transmission Line Supervisor: Dr. Abdul Hasib Chowdhury	Gilmanur Rashid		Md. Nazmus Sahadat			Md. Shakhawat Hossain
	Feasibility Study of Power Generation from Rice Husk in Bangladesh   Supervisor: Dr. Shahidul Islam Khan	Arunodoy Saha		Partha Pratim Acharjee			Sadi Md. Shihab
	Hybrid Power Generation Using Wind and Solar Energy Supervisor: Dr. Aminul Hoque	Md. Nizam Uddin		Khurshid Hasan			Md. Maidul Islam
	Load Flow Study of Bangladesh Power System Using an Advanced Software "PSAT" Supervisor: Dr. Taifur Ahmed Chowdhury.	Shibani Ghosh		Nurunnahar Islam Mou
	Study of Loss Reduction Strategies for Electricity Distribution Networks Supervisor: Dr. Abdul Hasib Chowdhury	Tanjib Rubaiyat		Riasad Azim			Md. Touhiduzzaman
	Modeling and Forecasting Natural Gas Demand of Bangladesh up to Year 2020 Supervisor: Dr. Shahidul Islam Khan	Himadri Shekhar Dey		Md. Abul Kalam Azad			Md. Ashfanoor Kabir
	Power Flow Study by Computer Simulation Supervisor: Dr. Taifur Ahmed Chowdhury	Shohana Rahman Deeba		Faeza Hafiz
	Sensorless Peak Power Tracking System for Small Scale Wind Turbine Generators Supervisor: Dr. Kazi Mujibur Rahman	Md. Wasi Uddin	Md. R H Asif			Rajib Goswami			Md. Y Sumon
	Volt-Ampere Reactive (VAR) Compensation : A Potential Solution of Powerflow Constraints of Bangladesh Supervisor: Dr. Md. Quamrul Ahsan	Khalid Imtiaz Saad			A.B.M. S Rupu			Shaikh Mostafa Fahad

 

My PCB

একুশ ও আমাদের চেতনা

স্যার ‘একুশে ফেব্রুয়ারি’ নিয়ে একটি প্রবন্ধ রচনা করতে দিয়েছেন। নোট বই নিয়ে হিমশিম খাচ্ছি। এদিকে আবার কারেন্ট নেই। মোমবাতির টিমটিমে আলোয় কাজ চালাচ্ছি। হঠাত্‌ বাজখাঁই গলার কার যেন কণ্ঠস্বর শুনতে পেলাম, “ওটা কি লিখছ?” অতি সাধারণ প্রশ্ন। তাছাড়া আমি বেআইনী কিছু করছিলাম না। কিন্তু বাড়িতে কেউ ছিল না - মা বাবা বাইরে দাওয়াত খেতে গিয়েছিলেন। অন্ধকার আর আলো-ছায়ার প্রভাব আর সেসাথে নিস্তব্ধতা আমাকে এমন আচ্ছন্ন করে ফেলেছিল যে ঘটনার আকস্মিকতায় চমকে ওঠায় হাতের ধাক্কা লেগে মোমবাতিটাও নিভে গেল।

“ওটা কি লিখছিলে?” - কণ্ঠস্বর আবার শোনা গেল।

“ভা-ভা-ভাষা আন্দোলন” (ভয়ে আমার জিহ্বা আড়ষ্ঠ হয়ে গিয়েছিল)। “কিন্তু আপনি কে?”

“আমি?” হাসির শব্দ শোনা গেল। “ভাষা শহীদদের প্রতিনিধিত্বকারী কণ্ঠস্বর বলতে পার। নাম বললে হয়তো চিনতে পারতে, কিন্তু ওটা থাক।”

“আপনি হাসছেন কেন?” সভয়ে প্রশ্ন করলাম।

“বা:! হাসব না? হাসির কাজ করলে হাসব না? ”

“ভাষা আন্দোলনের রচনা লেখাটা কি হাসির কাজ?”

কণ্ঠস্বর প্রশ্নের জবাব না দিয়ে পাল্টা প্রশ্ন করলেন, “তোমার বই এর তাকের উপর কি বলতে পারো?”

আলো না থাকলেও উত্তরটা আমার জানা ছিল। ওখানে আমার বহুমূল্যবান হিন্দি ও ইংরেজি গানের ক্যাসেটের কালেকশন। প্রশ্নকর্তা জবাবের অপেক্ষা না করেই বললেন, “তোমার প্রিয় গান, সিনেমা সবই হিন্দি ও ইংরেজি তাই না? যে দেশী ভাষা, সংস্কৃতিকে ভালবাসে না, সে একুশের রচনা লিখবে ব্যাপারটা হাস্যকর বৈকি।”

এবার বক্তব্যের শ্লেষটা ধরতে পারলাম। প্রতিবাদে বললাম, “সব সময় যে হিন্দি-ইংরেজি নিয়ে পড়ে থাকি তা তো নয়? তাছাড়া সামনে একুশে ফেব্রুয়ারি আসছে, খালি পায়ে শহীদ মিনারে গিয়ে আমরা আপনাদের শ্রদ্ধা নিবেদনে ফুল দেব . . .।”

আমার বক্তব্য শেষ হতে না হতেই শুনতে পেলাম, “সে তো খুব ভালো কথা, ফুল দেবে। কিন্তু সে বছরের একদিন। বছরের অন্যদিন গুলোতে সেই খালি পায়ের শোক ঢাকতে হিন্দি-ইংরেজির বুট পড়ে লাথি মারবে। তোমরা বছরের একদিন বাঙ্গালী থাক, অবশিষ্ঠ দিন গুলোতে বাঙ্গালীও থাক না, ইংরেজও থাক না। শহীদ মিনারের ফুল যদি শ্রদ্ধা ভক্তির নিদর্শন হয় তবে Full Volume এ ছাড়া ইংরেজি-হিন্দি গান গুলো কিসের নিদর্শন?”

“তোমরা একুশের চেতনায় ঋদ্ধ হতে পার নি। একুশ একটা বিরাট ব্যাপার‌। বাঙ্গালি, বাংলাদেশীর রক্তের দামে কেনা এক গৌরবের অলঙ্কার এই একুশ, যা আমাদের মাতৃভাষায় কখা বলার সুযোগ দিয়েছে। পরাধীন যে দেশে শোষকের বিরুদ্ধে এইভাষার দাবীকে সুপ্রতিষ্ঠিত করতে আমরা বুলেটের সামনে বুক পেতে দিয়েছিলাম, আজ স্বাধীন দেশে তোমরা সে অধিকারকে সুলভে পেয়েও তার সদ্ব্যাবহার করছ না। লজ্জার কথা। একুশের চেতনাকে বুকে ধারণ করতে পার না বলেই তোমার এই একুশ নিয়ে লিখতে নোটবই ঘাটতে হয়। তোমার আদর্শ ঘাটতি তুমি নোট বই দিয়ে ঘোচাতে চাও, তাই না? তুমি যদি একুশের চেতনা বুঝতে, তবে বুঝতে পারতে আমাদের আপন ভাষা মাতৃভাষা বাংলাও এক রত্নভাণ্ডার। আমি ভিনজাতীয় ভাষাকে বর্জন করতে বলছি না, কিন্তু মাতৃভাষা ফেলে যো তাদের একেবারে পূজো করতে হবে এটাও তো ঠিক না। ধিক্ তোমাদের! (এক্ষেত্রে গলা আদ্র হয়ে আসে) যারা বাংলাকে ফেলে ভিনদেশীয় গানের তালে উণ্মত্ত হয়, ধিক্ তাদের! যাদের হৃদয়কে মাতৃভাষার আর্তি এতটুকুও ভেজাতে পারে না, ধিক্ ধিক্ ধিক্...!!”

হঠাত্ প্রচণ্ড শব্দে কলিংবেল বাজাতে চমকে উঠলাম। অন্ধকারে রচনা লিখতে লিখতে ঘুমিয়ে পড়েছিলাম, কখন কারেন্ট এসেছে, টেরও পাইনি। মা-বাবা এসে পড়েছে। রাতে ঘুমাতে যাবার সময় স্বপ্নটার কথা আরেকবার মনে পড়ল। এই ধিক্কার, এই লজ্জা কার? এ লজ্জা আমার, এ লজ্জা আমাদের।

(এই ঘটনাটি সম্পূর্ণ কাল্পণিক এবং এর সাথে আমার কোন ব্যক্তিগত অভিজ্ঞতার সম্পর্ক নেই। তবে গল্পটিতে ইংরেজি-হিন্দির চাপে বাংলা ভাষার বর্তমান দুর্দশার চিত্র ফুটিয়ে তোলার চেষ্টা করা হয়েছে। গল্পটি নটরডেম কলেজের প্রকাশনা ঢাকঢোল / Chit Chat এর জানুয়ারী/ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০০৩ সংখ্যায় প্রকাশিত হয়েছিল। সেসময়ে আমার কম্পিউটার বাংলা ইউনিকোড সমর্থন করত না। এখন আবার সেটা দেখে দেখে টাইপ করলাম।)

(Note: If you can't read Bangla above, please try to follow guidelines here in Bangla wikipedia.)

The IEEE Region 10 Student Congress 2008

THE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) is the formal association of all Electrical, Electronic Engineers around the world. It is the largest professional organization of the world comprising of 370,000 members and 80,000 student member. The IEEE is divided into 10 regions around the world. The region 10 consists of all the countries of Asia Pacific. The region 10 holds a regional student congress in every two years. This year, the congress was held in Chennai, India. As the Chair of IEEE BUET Student Branch, I had the opportunity to attend the congress.

According to the IEEE Bangladesh Section, six of us were selected to attend the Region 10 Student Gold and WIE (Women in Engineering) Congress. They were Imtiaz Bhai, Lecturer of Department of EEE, BUET as the Chair of IEEE Gold Affinity Group of Bangladesh, Jahangir Sir, Assistant Professor of Ahsanullah UST and Student Activity Chair of IEEE Bangladesh Section, Jahangir Sir's wife and the WIE Chair Ismat Zerin , Lecturer of Daffodil University, the Vice Chair of BUET Student Branch Anika, the Chair of AUST Student Branch Rizvi Bhai, and I.

The congress unofficially began on 27th January, as most of the student delegates as well as the respected senior delegates had already arrived. Besides Bangladesh and the host country India, student delegates from Japan, Korea, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Macau, Malaysia, as well as from Australia and New Zealand came to the congress.

The theme of this R10 Student Congress was “IEEE for Youth Leveraging Social Networking for Professional Development”. It was an accurate commemoration of mankind's technical achievements and of IEEE's diverse network of young people. The congress had a common day, 28th January, with the GOLD/WIE congress being held during the same time.

28th January, we went to the Auditorium and registered for the even officially The day's program continued with a leadership presentation, and speeches by the President of IEEE, President Elect 2008 of IEEE John Vig, The Director of R10 Janina and Prof. Mini S. Thomas of IEEE Delhi Section.

In the Afternoon there was an Indian Cultural Program performed exclusively by the IEEE Student volunteers of Madras section with a variety of cultural items & folk dances, was greatly appreciated by all dignitaries and delegates.

The cultural activity was followed by the Student activities award ceremony which conferred awards to the winners of the various contests and new initiatives of the R10 SAC. Prof. Mini S. Thomas particularly mentioned about the BUET Student Branch which received the IEEE Enterprise Award 2006 competing with universities from all over the world.

On 29th January, we all gathered inside the auditorium with excitement and enthusiasm to enjoy the next day. The morning session started with a presentation by Cognizant Technologies, the principal sponsor for the student congress. The presentation was not one of the best events of the student congress, and many of us were nearly asleep when it ended. Then Prijoe Philips, the GOLD mentor for SAC of Region 10 got on to the stage.

The team building activities tested the creativity of the entire team and our ability to excel as a unit. It was amazing to see the way teams gave shape to their ideas. Each team were given 10 pieces of news papers, and asked to build a 'Taj Mahal' with them in 15 minutes. We divided the work in 10 segments and then built the segments and reunited them. Surprisingly each and every team could complete their Taj Mahals.

In the mean time, for the vibrant student branches of R10 Exhibition, the stalls of various student branches, about 19 in all, were set up for exhibition and evaluations. For our branch, I printed and laminated some pictures. Other branches made posters, banners, list of activities, and distributed annual magazines and pamphlets. The enthusiastically put up stalls proved to be tough to judge the winner, and it was only after a lot of discussion that the judges (Lewis Terman, President IEEE, John Vig, President Elect IEEE, and Roberto Marca, R9 Director) could decide the best four student-branches, BUET Bangladesh, NIT, Warangal, RASET, Kerala, and IGIT, Delhi.

In the group discussion session each of the groups was given a question to be discussed for 15 minutes. After that one of the team members had to go to the stage to highlight the main points. The suggestions were well appreciated by the dignitaries, Lew, John and Roberto.

After the exhibition and the group discussion it was time for the Multi Cultural show by the student delegates. There were lively songs and Kungfu from China, the Haka dance from New Zealand and the Kerala section presenting their entire culture in short pieces of dances and songs. Everyone just couldn't get enough of it! Unfortunately in an earlier incident Anika sprained her ankle, and we could not perform on stage.

The last day of the IEEE R10 Congress 2008 was packed with enriching presentations and nostalgic memories. The certificates were distributed among the delegates. The closing ceremony was followed by exchange of gifts amongst delegates as a token of remembrance and affection. The student congress gave the delegates a wonderful opportunity to interact with peers from all over Asia-Pacific.

Following the closing ceremony, a tour to Mahabalipuram a world heritage sight, built in the seventh century by the Kings of the Pallava dynasty was organized for the participants. The Mahabalipuram monuments are rock-cut and monolithic, constituted by cave temples, rathas (chariots), sculpted reliefs and structural temples with beautiful beaches, which caught all of us spell bound.

After the congress, we had to take the same tiring 28 hours journey to Kolkata, stayed overnight there, and took the bus from Salt Lake, Kolkata to Dhaka. The bus journey took 16 hours, with a 2 hours stand still at Aricha Ferry Ghat. The worst part was, I had to attend class from 8:00 AM the next day.

The congress is over now. But I actually made a lot of new friends there, now we keep in contact through facebook and email. There is George from New Zealand, Dipankar and Ankita from Delhi, Zeeshan from Bangalore and many many more. I wish we could organize such an international student congress in Bangladesh so that we could also share the technical as well as the non technical knowledge from engineering students of different countries of the world.

published in the Star Campus:
http://www.thedailystar.net/campus/2008/04/03/feature_IEEE.htm

Chair, IEEE BUET Student Branch
& UG Student, Department of EEE, BUET

Project Gutenberg: Enlightening the World Digitally

When I was a little boy, I liked classic books. My mother used to buy books of, Children's Fairytales, Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Tarzan Shamagra'; Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Sherlock Holmes Shamagra' all translated in Bengali. When I grew up, (I am twenty now), I wanted to read the original English versions of those books. But if you want to buy good quality English books, they may cost you as much $20. Moreover, it is not easy to find all old and famous books in a Bangladeshi book-shop. The book-stalls usually keep books that have higher demands in the market. An alternative solution to obtain copyright-expired books legally is also available today. You can try to read a book by downloading it and then reading it from your computer. Such computerized versions of books are known as electronic-book, or e-book.

There are many sites to download free electronic books. Microsoft has developed its own standard for e-books like the MS Reader format. A lot of free e-books can be found from Microsoft's library, University of Virginia's E-taxt library or Google Book Search. But the oldest and perhaps most famous digital library in the internet is still project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg: What it is

Project Gutenberg is a collection of different old texts, copyright-expired materials, drama etc. People of Project Gutenberg define it as "a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works." It was founded in 1971 by Michael Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project aims at keeping the books "as free as possible".

For that reason most of the books are stored in simple text (ASCII) format that can even be opened from a DOS based operating system. Some books are even stored in MP3 Audio format.

Meaning of 'Free' is 'Freedom'

What is 'Free'? Project Gutenberg tells us actually there are two types of 'free-ness one is free as 'free of charge' and the other is free as 'freedom'. Free of charge means that you don't have to pay for the book you received. Freedom denotes that you may do as you like with the book you received. As for example you might receive a complementary copy of a book from a writer free of charge, but copying the book, redistributing it, or even lending it to a friend causes an infringement of the Copyright act. On the other hand, free as in 'freedom' means you may just copy, redistribute, or even reprint and sell the book. So free as in freedom beats free of charge. Almost all Porject Gutenberg e-books are both free of charge and free as in freedom.

The history of Project Gutenberg

The Founder Michael Hart was a student at the University of Illinois in 1971. He got access to a Xerox Sigma V mainframe Computer in the university's Materials Research Lab. Through friendly operators, he received an account with a virtually unlimited amount of computer time. (Computers were expensive those days, unlike today, where all of us have virtually unlimited computer time) Its value at that time has since been variously estimated at $100,000 or $100,000,000. Hart wanted to repay this gift by doing something that could be considered to be of great value.

Incidentally, that particular computer was one of the 15 nodes on the computer network that later became part of the Internet. At that time Hart also believed that computers would one day be accessible to the general public and decided to make works of literature available in electronic form for free. He used a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence in his backpack, and this became the first Project Gutenberg e-text. He named the project after Johannes Gutenberg. Johannes Gutenberg was a German goldsmith and inventor and is usually considered to have invented the European technology of printing with movable type in 1447.

By the mid 90s, Hart was running Project Gutenberg from Illinois benedictine college. More volunteers had joined the effort. Hart later came to an arrangement with Carnegie Mellon University, which agreed to Administer Project Gutenberg's finances. As the volume of e-texts increased, volunteers began to take over the project's day-to-day operations that Hart had run.

In 2000, the Project Guetnberg Literary Archive Foundation, Inc. was chartered as a non-profit corporation, in Mississippi to handle the project's legal needs. Project Gutenberg is now hosted by ibiblio at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At first most text was entered namually through typing until image scanners and optical character recognition software improved and became more widely available, which made book scanning more feasible.

Books available

You can browse though the enormous collection of books in the Project Gutenberg's official website. The address is www. gutenberg. org If you are fond of classic books like me, then you'll probably love it.

The site has books of Homer and William Shakespeare. You'll get old thrillers like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), Adventures stories like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), novels like Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), priceless books like The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, written by Da Vinci himself, Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving), Moby Dick, (Herman Melville) or even Albert Einstein's Relativity: the Special and General Theory. Various translations of the Holy Qu'ran by the most famous translators such as Abdullah Yusuf, Marmaduke Pickthall, and Rodwell are available.

You'll also get all books of Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, HG Wells, Jules Verne, Sir Walter Scott, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Plato, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jonathan Swift.

Thousands of books are downloaded every day from project Gutenberg. More than 2215410 persons downloaded books in the month of October 2006, only from their main main site. (Project Gutenberg records IP address of each computer, and does not count multiple downloads from the same IP address more than once.) But the servers are usually quite fast. Gutenberg maintains many mirrors (copies) of its archives on all seven continents.

The CDs and DVDs

The sweetest thing about Project Gutenberg is probably this distribution of CDs and DVDs. The CDs of Project Gutenberg contains their most popular 800 books, while the DVD contains the first 10000 books. The volunteers of Project Gutenberg distribute these CDs and DVDs absolutely free of charge. I requested for both a CD and a DVD of all the books, and got both in two months. After you have received a CD or a DVD, Project Gutenberg encourages you to re-distribute it to your friends, family or other people.

Precaution

You might face some problems when reading a book on the computer screen. For example, looking at the computer monitor screen, especially if it is an ordinary CRT screen for a long time may harm your eyes. Reading a book on the computer screen for hours is very strenuous for eyes. So if you can afford, try to take a printout of the book and then read. If you prefer reading the books on the computer screen, you should avoid reading for too long. Take a brake some time, and try to wash your eyes with cold water when possible. The Gutenberg e-books are normally in ASCII format, and thus they are by default viewed in the Notepad. Try changing the default font of notepad to a more eye-soothing font (Like Comic Sans MS), or download a better text viewer to read the books. The users with poor eyesight can increase the font size and read the books comfortably.

Project Gutenberg is intentionally decenralized. There is no selection policy dictating what texts to add. Instead, individual volunteers work on what they are interested in, or have available. The Project Gutenberg collection is intended to preserve items for the long term, so they cannot be lost by any one localized accident. In an effort to ensure this, the entire collection is backed-up regularly and mirrored on servers in many different locations.

Project Gutenberg aims at digitalizing and distributing all the famous but copyright-expired texts in the world. They accept e-books in any language if there are enough volunteers to contribute. We, the Bengalis should therefore give some thought about preserving and distributing out own literature through project Gutenberg.

Published in Star Campus, a feature magazine of the Daily Star.
http://www.thedailystar.net/campus/2007/02/02/feature_gutenberg.htm