The early 20th one C saw a revolution in entertainment . Connoisseurs of the artwork no longer had to go to the playhouse to see drama or the concert dorm to listen euphony . Cinemas design movie stars onto monolithic sieve , and phonographs piped recordings of popular songs into hoi polloi ’s homes . Print books , however , were backbreaking to reinvent . That did n’t stop one enterprising creative person from envisioning the first e - book nearly 70 class before its time .
American writerBob Brownwas cheer to bring the write word into the electronic age after experience a film in 1930 . The visual culture medium was shape up fast , with “ talkies ” quickly supplant silent pictures . He finger his medium of choice wasfalling behindin compare . “ We have the talkies , but as yet no ready , ” Brown wrote . “ committal to writing has been bottled up in book since the start [ … ] It is prison term to pull out the stopper . ”
His proposal continued with a description of what his so - called “ Readies ” would look like . Brown ’s concept for the machine had many of the same advantages as modernistic east - readers . It would “ allow lecturer to adapt the eccentric size and avoid paper cut ” as well as “ read hundred - thousand - word novels in 10 minute ” if so desire . Instead of e - ink , this would be fulfill by ribbons of tiny text that readers would scroll manually behind a piece of paper of magnifying glass . An ingenius combination of microfilm and watch - tape machines , the gadget would be more ill-chosen than a Kindle but still commodious compare to a personal depository library .
Brown ’s idea received tending in the publishing world . Influential writers like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound send out him experimental study designed for the formatting , which he published as an anthology entitle “ Readies for Bob Brown ’s Machine . ” He await into applying for a patent and had a friend work up a wooden prototype . But as moving picture continued to advance — with the Second Coming of Technicolor and television within the span of a few years — ready eventually melt into obscurity , with readers preferring to pick up thenewly invented paperbackwhen they wanted something portable .
History would prove that Brown ’s invention was n’t a pie - in - the - sky mind ; it merely came too soon . University of Illinois studentMichael S. Hartcreated the first digitalize eastward - playscript — an electronic copy of the Declaration of Independence — in 1971 . The technology went through another evolution in 1998 , when Rocket Ebook and Softbook hit the market as the first dedicated , portable e - reviewer . Major publishing house started releasing digital versions of their titles in the other 2000s , and in 2007 , Amazon released the Kindle and evermore changed the plot . In the 21st C , Brown ’s vision of a papercut - free , electronic version experience is alive and well — for the most part . We ’re still waiting on a technology that makes it well-fixed to learn a 100,000 - discussion novel in 10 moment , though .
