Today’s Jeopardy Factoid: Declaration of Independence First E-Book

College student Michael Hart creates the first digital book when he types the Declaration of Independence into a computer at the University of Illinois

By Devon Ritchie
Famous Daily
July 4, 2012

Most American high schoolers are expected to read and understand the United States Declaration of Independence, the document responsible for founding America as a separate nation. Now, they can access it in a new format.

On this day, July 4th, in 1971, college student Michael Hart created the first digital book when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer at the University of Illinois.

Over time, e-books expanded to cover a wide variety of topics. E-books were once just the electronic version of a printed book, but some books now start off solely in electronic form. To accommodate this new technology, e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook have become more and more popular.