my impression is that mr. noring would like to knock michael hart down a few notches, and that's why he's doing his "historical research"... still, those of us who were promoting e-books back in the '80s know who was leading the pack. it was michael hart. and not only was he not getting any _credit_ then, he was actually derided as something of a kook... which he _is_, of course, but the kooks are often the people who end up transforming our world... :+) so to try and strip him of his credit here, now that we finally have come to realize his genius, well... it is downright cruel. small-minded and cruel... with due respect to the dreamers who came before and handed to us the _idea_ of electronic-books, including alan kaye, h.g. wells, and douglas adams, there is no question who _invented_ the e-book, by virtue of sitting down and actually entering one: it's michael hart... as one of the greatest inventors who ever lived said, only 1% is inspiration, the other 99% is perspiration. plus michael hart gave us something even better -- the concept of "unlimited distribution" of e-books... compared to the _commercial_ e-book efforts, which somehow noring wants on equal footing, look how many more riches _that_ idea gave us. -bowerbird p.s. along these lines, consider this from alan kaye:
"We're running on fumes technologically today," he says. "The sad truth is that 20 years or so of commercialization have almost completely missed the point of what personal computing is about."