Well,
to start with something, you need to know your history. With ebooks (electronic books) that is the same. So, how did it start?
39 years ago, in 1971, Michael Hart created this new innovation. To help his innovation he founded Project Gutenberg of the Illinois University (USA), which is a public library with more than 2,000 books. The ebooks delivered by Project Gutenberg are free. The project still exists.
Zahur Klemath Zapata was the first to develop the software that was needed to read digital books (as they were called in the early days). Digital book version 1. Name of the ebook: On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts (Thomas de Quincey
It took 10 years, when the first commercial ebook was launched. Of course it was a dictionary. Random House was the first.
Again a few years later, 17 to be exact, in 1997 the first ebook fair took place in the USA, where standards of the ebook were discussed.
Today to our knowledge about half a million ebooks are available in libraries and approximately 10 times that amount can be obtained in a commercial way. Growth started just a couple of years ago, when the first readers were invented. Amazon can take the credits for introducing the first commercial profitable and desired ebook reader, the Kindle.
As lovers of ebooks we have to be grateful for what they did. Applause!
Update: Video about Project Gutenberg:
here How to download an ebook of Project Gutenberg to your iPad / iPhone!
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