Although use of the term "electronic commerce" (or "e-commerce") dates back only to the 1970s, broadly interpreted it includes all commercial transactions that use any electronic communications facilities. Used this way, its origins extend back to the commercial use of the telegraph in 1861. However, the term was widely adopted in the 1990s to describe business transactions involving the Internet. There is, nonetheless, historical continuity between earlier technologies and the Internet since Internet-based commerce is rooted in prior technologies, policies, and business practices.

The Emergence of Electronic Commerce

During the first half of the twentieth century, the use of the telephone and the introduction of office machines such as the typewriter, adding machine, cash register, mimeograph, and Teletype transformed previous ways of doing business, creating a new paradigm based on mechanical automation. Then, following its development during World War II, the computer became commercially available in 1951. Early...