When Thomas Alva Edison recited “Mary had a little Lamb” and recorded it on his invention, the phonograph, we had the first audio recording being played. This was in 1877. Over the years the Phonograph has undergone tremendous changes and today in the world of Information Technology, the development is mind-boggling and we are limited by space in this article to write about these developments.
The term Audio Book came into existence during the year 1970 and later developments saw the release of audiobooks with poetry and other academic information. From the 1980s, lessons were converted into audio and were made available in stores. Today many books, both fiction and non-fiction are available as audiobooks.
Audiobooks are voice recordings of books that you can listen to. The exact words in the books are recorded in voice format and distributed over different media. You can get the full or unabridged version or a shorter or abridged version of the book.
Your Smartphone, speaker system, computer, and tablet will help you to listen to these audios.
In this article, we discuss briefly how audiobooks have developed over the years and their present status.
1900 to 1970s
In the United States, short crisp voice recordings were sold on gadgets during the late 1800 and early part of 1900. These gadgets were in the form of cylinders and these recordings were limited to less than 5 minutes. The recordings were improved to 12 minutes.
In 1931 a talking book program was developed to help injured veterans of World War I and other visually impaired adults. These were distributed free. This was followed by the preparation of children’s audiobooks meant for schools and libraries.
1970 to 1996
Recordings were made on cassette tapes during the 1970s and the duration of the audio increased to around 60 minutes. The longer version of books and religious works were recorded through audiobooks. The audiobooks industry started to grow steadily.
1996 – present day.
With the developments in the Information Technology industry and with the spread of the Internet, the audiobook industry took a tremendous leap. With the faster-downloading facilities that were available and with stronger connectivity, the popularity of audiobooks grew exponentially between 1996 to this day.
In the intervening years, the cassette gave way to the CD, and the CD gave way to MP3CD. This has propelled the growth even higher. The tremendous advances in mobile computing technology have contributed greatly to the growth of audiobooks, and today we have highly sophisticated handheld devices like our Smartphones, tablets, and connected car systems that are revolutionizing this industry. With these all you can books you are a click away from hearing a story being told to you through your favorite device.
