Audiobooks – From LP's To MP3
The technical development of the recording media for audiobooks has speeded up tremendously. At the beginning audio books were pressed on LP’s, today they are simple digital files that can be downloaded from the internet. Here’s 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 yoga books and audio books online 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 what you ordered 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 LP’s were produced for the sight impaired. Here’s a short look back in time:
Already in the 1920′s, the RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) in England started 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 operated by hand and delivered the sound through the big horn. This was a big step forward for the sight impaired, 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 started the ‘Talking Book Service’ in 1936 . The first two books they distributed were:’The murder of Roger Ackroyd’ (Agatha Christie) and ‘Thyphoon’ (Joseph Conrad). 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 cassette tapes, making listening to audio books more convenient. Sony’s Walkman made it possible to take your audio book with you and listen whilst on the road. This is when 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 manufacturing technique 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 many hours. 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 browser, consulting the catalog of the online audio books 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 download audio books is open 24 hours!
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 novels as audio books and the well known foreign language courses by Pimsleur are available for download too. They also offer free audiobooks – a great way to test if this is for you.
Originally posted 2008-04-19 22:23:55.
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Start loving your life. And if you have issues, (everyone does) work to fix them. Everything can use improvement. Make a better quality of life. This does not mean lose 10 pounds in a week. It means get healthy. Eat healthy. Exercise. Feel good in your own skin. Take care of your body and it will start reflecting into other areas of your life. Make your life what you want out of it and your outlook will really start to grow.
This video was not taken in 1920. Alan Villiers was only 17 in 1920! Villiers bought the Georg Stage in 1934 for 1,571 GBP`s, he renamed her the Joseph Conrad
The truth is, the Napoleonic wars were the "First" World War. It's just the War to End All Wars (as it was called then) was called World War I when WWII started, and we were fighting Germany again.
I am far from a grammarian, but I believe it depends on the time that you are speaking of. I hope the following examples help a little (by the way, this is an extremely hard question for me to answer! Its very difficult to think about words themselves!)
"By 1999, I had published two books."
This means that in the years before and possibly including 1999, two books were published. They could have ve been published in 1920, 1922, 1982, etc, as long as by the end of 1999 two were published.
"In 1999, I published two books"
This means [...]
Thanks Mike, I have an analog tape recorder and a digital audio recorder that doesnt have USB cable and was wondering how I was going to get the EVPs off them and now I know lol!!!
fuck the world 4 world war i? my greatgrandfather almost died of pioson gas in the trenches