ASClock The Blog About Everything!

The technical advancement of the recording media for audio books mp3 has speeded up tremendously. At the beginning audio books were pressed on Vynil Disks, today they are simple digital files that can be grabbed from the internet. This is the detailed story:

Audio books are a great way to use idle time. Load an audio book into your MP3 player or iPod - you can find audiobook for just about any interest, from novels to business books and download audiobooks about self-improvement to even the bible or the coran. You can find them around the clock, just by clicking a few buttons on your computer and an internet shop delivers the contents for your iPod or MP3 player conveniently to you.

Even if they have only become popular again recently, the original idea of audio books goes back about 80 years! Initially books on tape or on Vinyl LP’s were produced for the sight impaired. Here’s a short look back in time:

Already in the 1920’s, the Royal National Institute for the Blind in England (RNIB) initiated research to find the best way to manufacture audio books for sight impaired soldiers that were insured during the World War I battles. They then started to produce audio books on LP’s and the first ones were made in 1926. To play them they were put on the old fashioned LP players that had to be cranked by hand and delivered their contents through the big horn. This was a big step forward for the blind, but was hardly used by normal consumers. So these audio books from RNIB remained a niche product and never reached the masses.

The concept was successful, the RNIB launched the ‘Talking Book Service’ in 1936 . The first two books they distributed were:’Thyphoon’ (Joseph Conrad) and ‘The murder of Roger Ackroyd’ (Agatha Christie). Because the records could only hold 25 minutes of spoken text, an average audio book had to be recorded on an average of ten records.

During WWII, the studio used by the RNIB was attacked with bombs, and one month later a other new studio was flattened as well, destroying much needed equipment to continue the production. The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), who had started to produce audio books in the USA sent replacement parts and equipment to London so that the production could be taken up again.

The old fashioned LP’s were displaced by modern LP’s and finally cassettes, making listening to audio books more practical. Sony’s Walkman made it possible to take your audio book with you and listen on the go. This is the time audio books started to be bought by the general consumers. The next step was to produce these listening books on Compact Disk (CD), making them even more convenient.

Over the last few years the audio book technology has made a quantum leap: Digital files (MP3) can be packed onto a player that weighs only a few grams and runs on one set of batteries for a long time. The most popular player is without doubt the Apple iPod, but there are many other MP3 players on the market that have helped to make listening to content on the go very popular.

Finding an audio book is as easy as typing an address into your internet browser, consulting the catalog of the audio book shop and then downloading your audio book within minutes. No more need to visit your local library or book shop. If you want to shop at 3 am - no problem, the shop for your audiobook download is open 24/7!

One shop that offers a wide variety of audio books is the AudioBooksCorner Store. High quality audio books from publishers like BBC, Hachette and many others cover a wide variety of topics. Best selling authors offer their books as audio books and the well known language learning courses by Pimsleur are available for download too. They also offer audio books free - a great way to try if this is for you.