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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Electronic Book | ||
| An early reference and description of electronic book hardware and operation. |
Here is an early reference to a hand-held electronic device that emulates some book functions. It comes in the context of a remarkable book.
| Ford handed the book to Arthur.
"What is it?" asked Arthur. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That's its job." Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands. "I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day." "I'll show you how it works," said Ford. He snatched it from Arthur who was still holding it as if it was a two-week-dead lark and pulled it out of its cover. "You press this button here you see and the screen lights up giving you the index." A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began to flicker across the surface. "You want to know about Vogons, so I enter that name so." His fingers tapped some more keys. "And there we are." The words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared in green across the screen. Ford pressed a large red button at the bottom of the screen and words began to undulate across it. At the same time, the book began to speak the entry as well in a still quiet measured voice. This is what the book said... |
| From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
by Douglas Adams. Published by Harmony Books in 1979 Additional resources -
|
In practical terms, you can't have an electronic book without electronic text of books - and the first known electronic text of books was made available through Project Gutenberg. This project was started in 1971 when Michael Hart was given a substantial amount of computer time by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab by the University of Illinois. He envisioned the idea that computers could indefinitely store books and retrieve them for as many people who needed them, wherever they were.
Speak of the devil - now Google has decided to put millions of books from libraries online - read about the Encyclopedia Googlactica.
For an earlier reference, see the entry for the opton from Stanislaw Lem's Return From the Stars.
This item was contributed by Simon Smith.
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