15 things you didn’t know about Amazon

The online retailer is celebrating its 20th birthday – but do you know why it was called Amazon, or what the logo means? Read on to find out.

Twenty years ago this week, Amazon opened its virtual stores for the first time. Since then, it’s spearheaded a shopping revolution.

But it’s not just moving us away from the high street that Amazon has had a huge impact on: it’s also changed the publishing industry and how we read books.

Here are 15 facts you might not know about Amazon:

Jeff Bezos (below) founded Amazon on July 6 and Amazon.com launched on July 16, 1995 (the picture below shows the website when it launched). The company says it follows four principles: Customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence and long-term thinking.

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It was originally called Cadabra. Bezos changed the name to Amazon because it was "exotic and different", which he wanted his store to be, and like the Amazon, the biggest in the world.  Picking a name beginning with the word ‘a’ – so there was more chance of occurring at the top of lists – also appealed.

The arrow on the logo isn’t there randomly – it’s supposed to signify a smile from A to Z.

The company initially operated out of Bezos’s garage in Seattle, before moving to an official office (below).

Bezos didn’t waste money kitting out the office with expensive furniture; it included what were dubbed ‘door desks’: desks made from doors.

Amazon initially just sold books. The first book ever sold on the site was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter and the Fluid Analogies Research Group.

In October 1997, Amazon became the first online shop to reach one million customers.

The next year, Amazon branched out into music, opening its music store. Bezos said: "Using the power of technology and the internet, we're enriching the music experience for everyone, from casual to devoted listeners alike."

Amazon.co.uk launched in 1998, acquiring Bookpages – the second biggest online book retailer in the UK.

Amazon revolutionised the book market with the launch of the first Kindle in 2007. Originally codenamed ‘Fiona’ it used low-power consumption E-Ink technology. In 2010 the company announced that sales of e-books had outstripped paper books.

The biggest selling album on Amazon is Michael Jackson’s Thriller, followed by Their Greatest Hits by the Eagles and Bill Joel’s Greatest Hits Volume 1 & 2.

In 2014 Amazon announced ‘Prime Air’: a 30-minute parcel delivery service using drones. In May 2015 it was revealed that Amazon had approached the UK government about trialling the airborne service in the UK.

Jeff Bezos is building a 10,000-year clock inside a mountain in Texas, accessible through tunnels. "The vision was, and still is, to build a clock that will keep time for the next 10,000 years. As I see it, humans are now technologically advanced enough that we can create not only extraordinary wonders but also civilization-scale problems. We're likely to need more long-term thinking." Find out more at http://www.10000yearclock.net/.

In May 2015, Amazon had 122,121,794 visitors per month and is the fifth-highest ranked website in the US.

To celebrate its 20th birthday, Amazon launched Prime Day with exclusive discounts for Prime members. 56,000 Lord of the Rings trilogy box sets, 47,000 televisions and 14,000 iRobot Roomba 595 Pet Vacuum Cleaning Robots were sold; in the case of the latter, this compared to just one the previous Wednesday.

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