EOTO: How the Kindle Changed Digital Reading Forever

 

The Amazon Kindle is a lightweight device that was created to bring digital reading to everyone, no matter where they live.

In August of 2004, CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and senior vice-president Steven Kessel were exploring the idea of creating an e-reader and brought on Jateen Parekh, a systems engineer, who worked in Silicon Valley at Replay-TV and Philips Research. Parekh's knowledge was useful as he had worked on similar technologies before.

The first Amazon Kindle was released in 2007 by a team at Amazon. They set out to solve the problem of making digital reading comfortable for their users. Bezos wanted the Kindle to be simple to use, and did not want to complicate it with the device being able to connect to Wi-Fi networks. He wanted non tech-savvy people to be able to use this e-reader as well.

Due to nothing like this being attempted before, there had to be cellular access embedded into the device, which was considered impossible at the time. It took three years of trial and error to get the Kindle up and running. Not only were there problems with the screen of the device, but the company that was set to provide the wireless chips (Qualcomm)

 was sued by a competitor. This set everything back for months.

When the Kindle was released in 2007, Amazon underestimated the demand for it. The first batch sold out within hours of it's release. People were curious about this device and could not get enough of it. Having access to 90,000 books through a device was revolutionizing.

When purchasing the first Kindle, customers received a thank you note for their purchase and had the ability to provide feedback to Amazon about their device. This greatly helped the creators make improvements in later models of the Kindle.

About 2 years later, Amazon released another model of the Kindle, Amazon Kindle 2. This model has a button layout that was less complicated than the original, longer battery life, improved technology for faster page turns and better refreshing, a feature called "read to me" that allowed the device to read to the reader, and a storage boost to accommodate thousands of more books. 

In March of 2009, the free Kindle app was launched. This allowed readers to read from anywhere on an iPhone and iPod touch, without a Kindle device. Customers no longer had to buy a Kindle to get the e-reader experience. They could read from their iPhone and iPod without having to spend any money.

Amazon did not just stop here. A few months later, in October of 2009, Kindle went global. Now people all around the world could purchase a Kindle or read in the app and have access to hundreds of thousands of books in over 30 languages on iOS, Android, PC, and Mac devices.

Advancements continued when Amazon announced the launch of the Kindle app for Android devices in June 2010. Now Android users could enjoy the experience of reading books in the Kindle app without having to purchase a Kindle. Android devices were able to be turned into a book and users could read anytime, anywhere.

Amazon continued to make new models of the Kindle in the following years. They added features such as WiFi connectability, access to more books, touch control, more storage, longer battery life, illumination to the display, and much more.

The world was changed forever with the Kindle. People no longer had to buy books to read them. Now they could read them from the comfort of their own home, with just the touch of a button.