|
Audiobooks pre-date ebooks.
They certainly existed in 1950, but few contracts would have included them. Mostly produced for blind people.
78s (Since late 1900s, abridged, usually 12" rather than 10". 33 rpm 12" & 14" existed from 1932 for cinema but I don't know if used for talking books) LPs (1948 for microgroove: 33rpm, 16 rpm later 1950s), special format tape cartridges for blind, cassettes (maybe since 1962), CDs (1982). Only started to be marketed to regular sighted people from 1980s. MP3s invented about 1991/1992, public 1995, Winamp 1997. Portable players later.
Audible's portable player ONLY for audio books (too poor for music) was early 1998. True portable players for MP3 / AAC etc started mid 1998 for Flash and HDD. By 1999 iRiver, Rio and Creative had players. Sony 1999, but they had portable CD in 1984 and minidisk in 1992. Audio books were on CD, but not on MiniDisk, though it did have pressed commercial music (dual format player). Creative had a 6 GB player over a year before Apple's 5GB first iPod released Oct 2001 in USA.
At that time Cassette and CD were still the only format used by the main publishers. MP3 based "talking books" were first widely available in libraries as dedicated physical players that could be borrowed.
Eventually Amazon bought Audible and now streaming/Audible is the main source of audio books and marketing now aimed at everyone rather than the blind.
The cassette is still the best format for totally blind as it's much fewer cassettes than CDs, the tape remembers the place and the player can be easily operated by feel. Audio on a phone or Kindle is appalling for a blind person.
|