5. The Amazon Kindle, of sorts, was first predicted in 1935 as an electronic book depository and viewer to be used from the comfort of your armchair
Books have been part of everyday life for centuries, serving as a repository of knowledge and culture for civilizations and a critical aspect of daily life in the modern world. Consequently, with the expansion of education and efforts to eradicate, successfully for the most part in the western world, illiteracy, it is perhaps unsurprising that someone predicted the eventual compartmentalization of the written word into a compact and portable technological storage unit.
In 1935, in the April edition of Everyday Science and Mechanics, the e-reader was first designed, albeit in a rudimentary fashion, under the title of “the book reader of the future”. Designed around a seated armchair, a projected screen is situated at an elevated height at eye level in front of the individual. With an adjustable focus and page-turning by remote, “miniature film” would carry “photographs of book pages” for display on a “ground glass screen” for the convenience of the homeowner. This prediction, although wrong in terms of the size of the reader, has largely become true to the credit of the magazine. In 2007 the Amazon Kindle was released and widely proclaimed as the beginning of the end of printed books. Whilst this apocalyptic end has yet to transpire for hard copies of literature, the e-book market share has since risen to just over 25% as of 2018 and is set to continue growing in the years to come.