We take e-books for granted today. But how have we reached where we are... Who first thought of e-books? Who first created one?

1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF
E-BOOKS
e
1930 The ‘Readies’
• Bob Brown, inspired by the ‘talkies’, writes a book
about “The Readies”
• ‘The Readies’ are (then) imaginary machines that
could store and display books
1940
• Roberto Busa, a priest, makes works of Thomas
Aquinas available in an electronic format
• Ángela Ruiz Robles, a teacher, creates Mechanical
Encyclopedia for her students
1971
holy man & clever woman
Michael S. Hart
• He types the American Declaration of Independence
into a computer
• This becomes the popularly accepted first e-book
1978 Hitchhikers Guide to the
Galaxy
• Douglas Adams presents the idea of e-books to the
masses in his book
• The book is called (no prizes for guessing) “The
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”
1989 The BIBLE
• Franklin publishes many versions of the Bible on an
electronic device
• The e-Bible sells very well
1993 e-books on floppy disks
• Digital Book Inc. publishes 50 books in Digital
Book Format
• These are stored on floppy disks
1998 dedicated e-readers
• The Rocket ebook and the Softbook - the first
dedicated e-readers
• They make their first appearance in 1998
2000 ride a bullet
• Stephen King publishes his novella 'Ride a
Bullet' only in e-book form.
• It sells 400,000 copies in just 24 hours
2004 Librie
• Sony introduces Librie
• First e-reader to use the now very common electronic
ink text rendering technique
2007 Kindle
• Amazon introduces Kindle
• All Kindles sell out in less than 6 hours
• Birth of Popular E-books
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