Quote:
Originally Posted by DNSB
I can't help but wonder what you were reading ebooks on in the 1968-1978 timeframe?
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I may have exaggerated a bit. I began reading ebooks on an HP95LX. I bought it in the year it was released in 1991, not long after it's release date. Someone wrote an app for reading books scanned to text called the Vertical Reader, probably in it's first year. So I probably began in 1991, maybe early 1992.
That said, if I had known about them I could have read them earlier. Michael Hart is thought to have originated ebooks in 1971 and founded Gutenberg in that same year. I wasn't aware of this till after I bought my HP95lx but if I had been I'd probably have been reading earlier.
Ebooks didn't become common until the Palm Pilot, sometime in 1992 or later. I got my first Palm about 1993 and by then they were all over the place on Palm sites. It was still a few years later before you could actually buy ebooks. I'm not allowed to talk about this much in here but commercial ebooks came into being when there were already a lot of people reading ebooks, mostly on Palms.
I think a small point of protest is needed here. I'm all for keeping this site honest but being unable to talk about the real history of ebooks doesn't really seem like a good way of doing it.
Barry