BBC - Culture - Audiobooks: The rise and rise of the books you don’t read

Back in 1878, shortly after he had invented the phonograph, Thomas Edison hit upon an idea. Leaning over his new machine one day he recited the words: "Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow." As he created the first ever audio of the spoken word, Edison dreamed that the technology might one day allow a whole novel to be recorded. Fast forward nearly 150 years, and he'd be pretty impressed to find more than 400,000 audiobooks available to download straight into his pocket.