DD 8 Electronic Book Player 1
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Sony Data Discman with literature, case.
Creative Commons LicenseJeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
This first generation Data Discman that I bought in October 2020 looked like it had never been used. The printed book catalogue offered 250 electronic books. The brochure on the left advertised the Grolier Encyclopedia on CD-ROM. It is next to a version of the same encyclopedia on floppy disc.
The lower side of the original box for the Electronic Book Player referred to an Electronic Book Standard and described "Compact optical discs that contain up to 100,000 pages of text, 32,000 pictures, or 5.6 hours of digital sound."
Creative Commons LicenseJeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
The lower side of the original box for the Electronic Book Player referred to an Electronic Book Standard and described "Compact optical discs that contain up to 100,000 pages of text, 32,000 pictures, or 5.6 hours of digital sound."
Detail map of 8, 2-chōme, Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tōkyō-to, Japan Overview map of 8, 2-chōme, Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tōkyō-to, Japan

A: 8, 2-chōme, Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tōkyō-to, Japan

The Data Discman Electronic Book Device, Probably First eBook Reader that was Commercially Produced

1992
The upper cover of the original box for the Sony Data Discman DD-8 prominently marketed the device as an "Electronic Book Player."
Creative Commons LicenseJeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
Upper cover of the original box for the Sony Data Discman DD-8, prominently marketed an "Electronic Book Player."

In 1992 Sony Corporation introduced the Data Discman, an electronic book device marketed in the United States to college students and international travelers. The Data Discman may be called the first eBook reader that was commercially produced, but it was introduced long before the eBook concept had a wide following, and it had little success outside of Japan.

The Data Discman's purpose was quick access to electronic reference information on a pre-recorded disc. Searches for information on disc were entered using a QWERTY-style keyboard, and utilized the "Yes" and "No" keys. A typical Data Discman model had a low resolution small grayscale LCD, a CD drive unit, and a low-power computer. Early versions of the device were incapable of playing audio CDs. Software was prerecorded, and featured encyclopedias, foreign language dictionaries, novels, etc.  All Data Discmans had audio and video output capabilities.

Timeline Themes

E-Book / Digital Book History
Book History from 1900 to 1999