What Is E-Commerce?

Though the technology to allow for online shopping only became available to the public in the 1990s, the idea of online shopping was actually invented by an IT expert and entrepreneur named Michael Aldrich in 1979. Much ahead of his time, he successfully connected a television through a telephone line to a processing computer and called it tele-shopping. More than 40 years later, his original idea has come to fruition – even smart TVs now allow for shopping online! Aldrich is credited with the invention of online shopping, though it has changed a great deal since his original vision.