Via kottke, we learned that the first person Jeff Bezos ever hired at Amazon was Shel Kaphan. In this illuminating interview in The Macro, Kaphan describes his first meeting with Bezos and the early days of Amazon.com. Here is an excerpt:

“I wanted to take Books In Print or something like it and make a hypertext version. I’d been thinking about that before I even met Jeff. I wasn’t thinking about it in the context of selling books, but I was thinking, “Man, I hate going to the library and ruffling through those card catalogues and trying to find that thing that I’m looking for.” Nobody alive probably remembers that anymore. You actually had to go through drawers full of index cards to find books you were interested in. Then you’d walk around the library and browse the shelves to see if maybe the thing you’re interested in would be nearby.”

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