Amazon released its first Kindle e-reader in 2007. The original Kindle went on sale in the United States on November 19, 2007, introducing Amazon’s dedicated reading hardware and Kindle Store ecosystem.
The first model cost $399 and used a six-inch, four-level grayscale E Ink display. It included 250 MB of internal storage, enough for roughly 200 non-illustrated books, plus an SD card slot, keyboard, speaker, and headphone jack. Its defining feature was Whispernet, which used Sprint’s EVDO network to download books without requiring a computer.
The device sold out in about five and a half hours and remained unavailable for roughly five months. It was initially sold only in the United States. A common mix-up is confusing the original 2007 Kindle with the Kindle 2, released in February 2009, or with the Kindle DX, released later in 2009.