History

|| ||
 *  **YEAR ** ||  **EVENT **  ||
 * **1971 ** || Michael S. Hart created the first ebook by typing the U.S. Declaration of Independence into a computer.He later launched " Project Gutenberg " to create electonic copies of more books. ||
 * **1985-1992 ** || Robert Stein starts Voyager Company Expanded Books and books on CD-ROM. ||
 * **1990 ** || Eastgate Systems publishes the first hypertext fiction//, Afternoon, a Story//, by Michael Joyce, available on floppy disk. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 1992-1993 ** || <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> F. Crugnola and I. Rigamonti design and create the first ebook reader, called Incipit, as a thesis project at the Politecnico di Milano. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 1993 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Digital Book, Inc. offers digital books on floppy disk in Digital Book Format.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Bibliobytes, a project of free digital books online in Internet . ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 1995 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Amazon starts to sell physical books on the Internet.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Online poet Alexis Kirke discusses the need for wireless internet electronic paper readers in his article "The Emuse". ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 1996 ** || <span style="background-color: #fcfaa1; color: #ff0000; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">Project Gutenberg reaches 1,000 titles. The target is 1,000,000.  ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 1998 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Kim Blagg obtained the first ISBN issued to an ebook and began marketing multimedia-enhanced ebooks on CDs through retailers including Amazon.com, BN.com, and Borders.com. Shortly thereafter through her company "Books OnScreen" she introduced the ebooks at the Book Expo America in Chicago, IL to an impressed, but unconvinced bookseller <span style="background-color: #c4d3f8; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">audience.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #c4d3f8; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">First ebook Readers: Rocket ebook and SoftBook.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #c4d3f8; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Websites selling ebooks in English: eReader.com eReads.com. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 1999 ** || <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Webscriptions starts selling unencrypted ebooks. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2000 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Microsoft Reader with ClearType technology.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Stephen King offers his book "Riding the Bullet" in digital file; it can only be read on a computer.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Digital Book Index begins operation. DBI and the Online Books Page both organize electronic books from disparate sites into single, searchable indexes, creating large virtual libraries of ebooks. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2001 ** || <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Todoebook.com is the first website selling ebooks in Spanish. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2002 ** || <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Random House and HarperCollins start to sell digital versions of their titles in English. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2004 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Sony Librie with e-ink.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Google announces plans to digitize the holdings of several major libraries, as part of what would later be called the Google Books Library Project. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2005 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Amazon buys Mobipocket.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Google is sued for copyright infringement by the Authors Guild for scanning books still in copyright. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2006 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Sony Reader with e-ink.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> BooksOnBoard, one of the largest independent ebookstores, opens and sells ebooks and audiobooks in six different formats. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2007 ** || <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Amazon launches Kindle in U.S. [[image:ec400-ebooks/412px-Amazon_Kindle_-_Wikipedia.jpg width="202" height="276" align="center"]] ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2008 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Adobe and Sony agreed to share their technologies (Reader and DRM).
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Sony sells the Sony Reader PRS-505 in UK and France.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> BooksOnBoard is the first to sell ebooks for iPhones. ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2009 ** || * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Sony releases the Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Amazon releases the Kindle 2.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Barnes and Noble releases the Nook in the U.S.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2010 ** || * <span style="background-color: #fcfaa1; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Amazon releases the Kindle DX International Edition worldwide.
 * TurboSquid Magazine announces the first magazine publication using Apple's iTunes LP format, however, this project was cancelled before it reached the market.
 * <span style="background-color: #fcfaa1; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Apple releases the iPad with an ebook app called iBooks. Between its release in April 2010 to October, Apple had sold 7 million iPads.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Kobo Inc. releases its Kobo eReader to be sold at Borders in the U.S.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Amazon.com reported that its ebook sales outnumbered sales of hardcover books for the first time ever during the second quarter of 2010.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Amazon releases the third generation Kindle, available in 3G+Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi versions.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Kobo Inc. releases an updated Kobo eReader which now includes Wi-Fi.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Barnes and Noble releases the new NOOKcolor.
 * Sony releases its second generation Daily Edition PRS-950.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Google launches Google eBooks.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">** 2011 ** || * Barnes and Noble releases the new NOOK - The Simple Touch Reader.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;"> Amazon.com announces in May that its ebook sales now exceed all of its printed book sales.
 * Bookeen launches its own ebooks store: BookeenStore.com and starts to sell digital versions of titles in French. ||

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Information obtained, paraphrased and condensed from: eBooks - Wikipedia //