Online shopping is big business. Trillions of dollars of goods were bought over the internet in 2020. Although some people are still reluctant to shop online, it has been predicted by some experts that 95% of all shopping will be done through the internet by 2040. With the rapid growth in online sales recently, it’s easy to assume that online shopping only began in the last decade or so. It will likely come as a surprise then that the world’s first online purchase was made more than 35 years ago.
A British woman named Jane Snowball has the honor of being the first person to shop online. At the time, in May 1984, she was a 72-year-old grandmother living in Gateshead, England. A computer technician named Michael Aldrich modified Snowball’s television set and remote control to allow the elderly woman to place an order at the local Tesco supermarket. Using the remote control, Snowball bought eggs, cornflakes, and margarine from the store. The order was transmitted through telephone lines and involved computers at Tesco’s Gateshead branch and a library. After receiving the order, Tesco delivered the items to her home, and she paid for them in cash.
Snowball’s purchase is now viewed as a historic moment, but back then, Aldrich didn’t see it as that significant . It was done long before the World Wide Web and websites were invented. Aldrich said he considered what he did a fun experiment —he certainly did not foresee that internet shopping would eventually take off and become so popular. The main purpose of hooking up Snowball’s TV to Tesco was to try to help elderly people have a more convenient life, not to start a huge worldwide industry.
