Founders

Online shopping was introduced in the UK in 1979 by an entrepreneur named Michael Aldrich, who had converted old televisions into multi-user televisions. These systems began to take off in earnest in the 1980s, enabling computer-to-computer transactions over telephone lines, first in the UK, Ireland and Spain.

He pioneered online shopping, and his invention was one of the first communication tools that allowed for mass communication and interaction, but it was expensive and did not make financial sense for most businesses until the internet became more widespread. A little later, an online library was founded by a man named Charles Stock in 1992. He was another of the first to offer the online shopping experience to the public. This library was accessed via dial-up internet, which was about three years before Amazon was founded.