It’s really amazing that you can get the exact value listening to an [1] audio book while doing your normal chores as you would reading it.

Certain experts even say information sinks in more when we are not paying direct attention to them.

But when did this audio book phenomenon really start? In other words, what is the past of audio books?

Audio books seem to be a brand new invention, right?

WRONG!

It is very easy to make the assumption that audio books are a recent invention because of the mention of CDs, downloadable digital formats, MP3s, PDAs and other technological jargons each time audio books are discussed. But audio books started far before now.

To know how long audio books have been, it is pertinent to understand exactly what audio books are.

Forget about any other jargon you have heard, audio books are simply books that are recorded to be heard, instead of read.

That being the case, such recordings of books in audio formats have been around for a very long time - far before now. If you want to be specific, it is safe to say they have existed for at least half century ago.

It could even be longer, if you include the Library of Congress recordings made especially for the American Foundation for the Blind and distributed free throughout the U.S.

However, according to Robin Whitten, the editor and founder of the only magazine which is dedicated solely to the audio book industry - Audiofile–http://www.AudioFileMagazine.com, Caedmon (now a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers) can be credited for starting the recording of literature as far back as half a century ago.

Also, he said that Caedmon was only a small company way back then in New York, which began the process of recording the great authors and poets of the 1950s to audio. Specifically, he has said that one of the earliest recordings ever made were of the greats such as Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Fitzgerald and Robert Frost.

What happened then was that they were simply recorded while doing their own works and made as vinyl records.

But these early recordings can arguably pass off for the first collection of audio books ever.

However, audio books did not transition to the format of cassette tapes until the late 70s - 80s. From thence, it blossomed until audio books in audiocassette tapes came to be accepted by all and sundry.

For whatever reason however, the audio book phenomenon didn’t really kick off until the 1990s.

And now that we have changed from cassette tapes to compact disks even more people have an interest in audio books.

With the advent of the Internet and its paraphernalia, audio books have now transited from vinyl records, audiocassette taps and CDs into downloadable digital formats that can be listened to with a desktop computer, laptop computer, PDAs, etc.

If you still want to ‘go back through time’ the original book recordings that began this audio book industy are available.

Impossible?

Not really.

Some of those early 1950s analog recordings by Caedmon which were performed by the greats of those days can be purchased today on the Internet.

For instance, I searched on the world wide web and came across the actual recording of “The Lord of the Rings” as read by J.R.R. Tolken.

You can find that classic you have always dreamt of in [1] audio book format if you search hard enough on the Internet.

An excellent source that I have found for audio book downloads is Spoken Network. You can find them at:

www.spokennetwork.com?cam=ama0016