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1455
The Gutenberg Bible
Developed in Europe, the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed using mass-produced movable type. The printing of this book marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" which sparked the popularity of the printing press across the West. -
1473
First Printed Book in English
William Caxton published a translation of a French romance novel titled "The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye" in Bruges, Belgium. This is considered to be the first book printed in the English language. Caxton is considered to be the first person to introduce the printing press to England and the first English retailer of printed books. -
The New England Primer
The New England Primer was the first reading textbook introduced to the American Colonies compiled and published by British journalist Benjamin Harris. It was the most successful educational textbook in the 18th century (150 years after its publication) and used to promote literacy in the Colonies. -
A Grammatical Institute of the English Language
Noah Webster, Jr. compiled a three-volume collection of educational text titled "A Grammatical Institute of the English Language" that consisted of spelling, grammar, and reading. The first book, called the "Blue-Backed Speller," was printed and published to teach students how to read, spell, and pronounce words for the next one hundred years. It replaced the New England Primer as the most successful educational textbook in the 19th century. -
First Commercial Typewriter
American inventors Sholes and Glidden developed the first commercially successful typewriter, also known as the Remington No. 1. The working prototype was aquired by E. Remington and Sons and placed on the market to be commercially distributed. This typewriter was also the first to adopt the QWERTY keyboard, which is still used to this day. -
Project Gutenberg
Developed by Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books. Hart figured that anything entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely, thus storing a book into a computer can make any number of copies available for anyone to access. This encouraged the development of eBooks later on. -
The First Personal Computer
Considered to be the first true PC, the Altair 8800 was created by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry System (MITS). This computer kit was the first commercially successful and obtainable computer for the public. Due to its success, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were later inspired to create Altair BASICS, the first true programming language. -
The World Wide Web
English computer scientist Tim Burners-Lee wrote the three fundamental technologies that are still the foundation of the web that we know today: HTML, URI, and HTTP. This began the development of the World Wide Web and the establishing of web page editors/browsers. -
The Rocket eBook
Although it did not gain immediate widespread acceptance, the Rocket eBook is considered to be the first commercial handheld e-reader produced by NuvoMedia. It used an LCD screen and could store up to ten eBooks. -
Google Books
Google Books is the world's most recognized free search engine for full texts of books and magazines developed by Google, Inc. Each book is scanned by Google, converted to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and stored in a digital database. As of 2015, the number of scanned book titles reached over 25 million. -
The Amazon Kindle
The Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers marketed by Amazon creator Jeff Bezos and inspired by the Rocket eBook. This device allows consumers to browse, buy, and download a variety of reading material, including eBooks, magazines, and newspapers. The original Kindle was such a rapid success that it sold out in five and a half hours. -
The iPhone App Store
The App Store is first launched by Apple with 552 apps for the iPhone, 135 of which were free. This would soon develop into the contemporary App Store that includes approximately 2.2 million apps, with 88,000 of them specifically for educational use.
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