E-BOOKS
You are going to read an article about e-books.
For questions 1 - 6, choose the answer (A, B, C, D) which you think fits best according to the text.
E-books, as they are universally known, are text based publications in digital form. E-books are designed to be read off an electronically compatible device either an iReader, a Kindle, e-reader, tablet or personal computer. While e-books are the actual text and document being read, an e-reader is the device that makes this possible. E-books are stored as electronic files. They are small and easy to share and purchase.
The world’s first automated reader was invented by a woman named Angela Ruiz Robles. Angela had her innovative idea in Spain in 1949. She was a school teacher who watched her students carry text books back and forth from school every day. The idea was that her reader would be far easier to carry for school children, than a number of different text books. In Angela’s first design, smaller amount of text were printed onto spools and were operated by compressed air. She made her first prototype in 1949. While this book was not electronic, it is still considered as the first automated reader. She was never able to get a viable patent on the design, but there is a photograph of her holding it in 1949 so she can still claim it.
The invention of the internet was the next huge step forward in e-books. In 1971, Michael Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, was given unlimited computer time on a huge Xerox mainframe computer in the Materials Research lab probably because his brother’s best friend was one of its operators. What might seem like an incredibly boring time in Internet history, as there were not many people on the internet in 1971, Michael Hart turned it into an incredible opportunity.
The machine was used primarily for data processing, but it was also connected to ARPANET, a part of what would later become the internet. The value of this gift, given the huge expense of buying and running such machines, he later calculated to be around $100,000,000.
When Hart was given a copy of the Declaration of Independence at a grocery store in the lead up to the local fireworks on July 4th, he found his inspiration. Hart came up with a good use of the computer time he had been given. He typed the text into a computer, all in capitals as there was no lower-case option at the time, and sent out a message on ARPANET saying that it was now available to download. Six people took him up on the offer and downloaded the text. The world’s first e-book was born.
It was a long time before the next development came along in 1987 from the computer games creators East Gate Systems. It was around this time that the company published the first hypertext fiction work titled Afternoon. This book was created as the first demonstration of a new online programme called Story Space. Story Space was a software programme available for Personal computers for creating, editing and reading hypertext fiction.
In 1993, BiblioBytes launched a website to sell e-books over the internet, the first company to create a financial exchange system for the net. In 1999, American publisher Simon & Schuster created a new imprint, iBooks, and became the first trade publisher simultaneously to publish titles in e-book and print format. Dick Brass of Microsoft declared that e-books were the future of reading. He predicted that by 2018, 90% of all books sold would be e-books.
This number, 90% fails to take into consideration the very stable and profitable Gift Book Market. 40% of the paper book market is what is called a ‘gift purchase’. People buy each other books – and they don’t buy each other e-books. Christmas is still a huge time for selling books, recipe-books, picture-books, design books, coffee tablebooks and picture-books for new born babies. This market of book selling has not been affected by e-books.
Adapted from historycooperative.org