Audio Book - article about Audio Book

Getting To Know Your Audio Book History

It was easier to get an old grandmother to listen to an audio book of William Butler Yeats poems because she had been listening to the British Broadcasting Company all her life and BBC has radio programs which feature serialized classics. But the audio book in its basic form has come a long way since the oral histories of Native American tribes were recorded for research and posterity by anthropologist J.P. Harrington in 1933.

The immediate obvious use of course was for people with hearing disabilities and the American Congress created the “Books for the Adult Blind Project” which actually utilized talking-books and in a short while, the mass reproduction of them began. In later years the audio book would take the form of public-service, with institutions like the National Library Service putting out millions of copies of recorded books to blind citizens all across the country.

The Audio Book and Popular Culture

It was technology which pushed the audio book format into the realm of popular culture and mass consumer patronage. In the 60s, the development of the cassette player recorder allowed not only ease of use, but portability. In an age where everyone was trumpeting self-improvement, recordings of an instructional or educational nature became popular, reaching its peak with self-help audio-books and then naturally including general topics such as the humanities.

It became so main-stream that with the advent of the compact disc, audio book recordings developed its own market complete with rentals and producers who wanted a bigger slice of what had become a billion-dollar industry by introducing high-quality recordings done with large cast of voices and polished in high-tech studios.

Today, the audio book has leapt into cyberspace and into 21st century technology that has made it more accessible than ever before. It can now be downloaded and its formats fitted unto any digital listening device such as phones and MP3 players. Married with such hip and cutting edge modern tools, appreciation for a classic such as Jane Austen or William Shakespeare is expected to grow even among a generation who would be more inclined to read a comic book.

Perhaps the irony of the invention of the audio book is not in replacing the medium that it has somewhat replaced, but in drawing back attention to printed books. After all, when you’re tired of having ear-plugs on your phone the whole day, nothing beats the relaxation and magic of lying down in bed on a cold Saturday afternoon with a good old-fashioned book.

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