Rocket eBook
DeveloperNuvoMedia
Release date1998 (1998)

The Rocket eBook is an early commercial handheld e-reader that was produced by NuvoMedia in late 1998; it uses a LCD screen and can store up to ten e-books.[1][2] E-books are loaded on the device by connecting it to a computer, the device has two page turn buttons. Rocket-compatible e-books were sold online at Barnes & Noble and Powell's Bookstore.[3] It had a retail price of $499.

The Rocket eBook was manufactured by NuvoMedia until 2000, when it was purchased by Gemstar-TV Guide International for $187 million.[4] After purchasing NuvoMedia and merging it with SoftBook, Gemstar released an e-reader called the RCA eBook Reader.[4]

NuvoMedia

On April 15, 1997, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded NuvoMedia to make a product that could benefit from improving battery size and settled on designing an electronic book reader; the resulting Rocket eBook e-reader sold 20,000 units in 1999.[5]

References

  1. ^ eBooks: 1998 – The first ebook readers. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  2. ^ Kozlowski, Michael. "The Tale of Rocketbook – The very first e-reader". goodereader.com. Retrieved 2018-12-14.
  3. ^ David Strom. "E-Books: Still an Unfinished Work". Computerworld, Jul 19, 1999. p. 76.
  4. ^ a b Hossein Bidgoli. The Internet Encyclopedia. John Wiley and Sons, 2004. p. 790. ISBN 978-0-471-22202-6
  5. ^ Baer, Drake. "The Making Of Tesla: Invention, Betrayal, And The Birth Of The Roadster". Business Insider. Business Insider. Retrieved 7 June 2016.

External links

Ebooks
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