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Originally Posted by Berengaria
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Can anyone tell me who invented the ereader?
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It's hard to say since the ereader wasn't a clear cut new invention. Instead, is was a small evolutionary step up (sideways??) from a range of earlier devices.
It can be said that the ebook was invented by Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, in 1971. Ebooks were read on whatever device you had, initially on dumb terminals connected to a mainframe server and later on personal computers with large storage attached, typically CDs. When the electronic PIMs (Personal Information Managers) appeared, devices like the Apple Newton and the successful PalmPilot series among others, that quickly gain software to read ebooks. Companies appeared to market ebooks and they generally developed their own reader software for various PIM devices.
It was a small step for Sony and Amazon to develop stripped down PIMs that only had reader software installed and were not open for the installation of other software. This was the beginning of the dedicated ereader. I think Sony was the first, but I'm not sure.
Today, ereaders continue to be popular, but PIMs in the form of tablets (read: large superPIMs) and smartphones (read: smaller superPIMs with embedded cell phones) still remain popular portable reading devices as well.