4 ms·

Some images or more descriptive text would help understand what an ebook might have looked like in 1970? Was it just an idea, or were there prototypes? This wa

by bambax 5y ago

Some images or more descriptive text would help understand what an ebook might have looked like in 1970? Was it just an idea, or were there prototypes? This was a time when people were photographing paper books to make microfilms (sometimes destructively), and then to look at microfilms you needed a bulky enlarger. I really don't understand what "ebbok" could have meant then.

simias 5y ago
What do you mean by "destructively"?
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  It's easier to scan or photograph loose sheets than a bound book. If you want to do it fast it's much easier to cut the pages out of the bindings.
- bambax 5y ago
  They destroyed the books to scan them. They cut the pages to send them to a scanner, and discarded them afterwards. It was a horrible tragedy.
  - jmbwell 5y ago
    Indeed, the book scanning project at Google at one point involved removing the spine of a book with a bandsaw, then scanning the loose pages. For fun, they collected the sawed-off spines and glued them to boards fashioned to look like bookcases. The office looked like a library, but there were no books on the "shelves," only spines.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Generally: unbinding the leaves of a book so that they can be more easily handled by a scanner, often including an automated feeder. The simplest method is to simply cut off the binding (a powered paper cutter can do this in an instant). The alternative is nondestructive scanning, where the binding and publication as a whole remain intact. This is typically performed using flatbed scanners, angled scanners (the book is either face up or face down on a scanning bed which typically forms a ~90 degree angle), automated feeders which incorporate page turning (via numerous methods), or face-up scanning with digital deconvolution of page distortions. Higher speed presents higher risks of both poor / missed scans, and damaging original materials. Methods should be tuned to the materials, their intrinsic value and/or uniqueness, and end goals. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning#Destructive_scanning_methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning#Destructive_scan... There are numerous book-scanning projects with YouTube videos of their methods. Typical rates range from ~300 -- 3,000 pages/hour, with 1,000 pp/hr being a good middling rate. DIY 1,000 pp/h https://youtube.com/watch?v=ne-h7FTMZBk https://youtube.com/watch?v=ne-h7FTMZBk https://youtube.com/watch?v=RdLcrNeWjIs https://youtube.com/watch?v=RdLcrNeWjIs Commercial, manual page turning: https://youtube.com/watch?v=adQjU9JAWfw https://youtube.com/watch?v=adQjU9JAWfw 3,000 pp/h vacuum page turning https://youtube.com/watch?v=cmhIJOqepVU https://youtube.com/watch?v=cmhIJOqepVU ... capable of managing very thick volumes: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SdipuAuWsEs https://youtube.com/watch?v=SdipuAuWsEs Google fully automated linear scanbot: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4JuoOaL11bw https://youtube.com/watch?v=4JuoOaL11bw Face-up, no-platten, with deconvolution: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iAmrch_1f2U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iAmrch_1f2U
SapporoChris 5y ago
You need to follow the links to get the details. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27045/pg27045.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27045/pg27045.html "On July 4, 1971, on Independence Day, Michael keyed in The United States Declaration of Independence (signed on July 4, 1776) to the mainframe he was using." As for what it looked like, well that would depend on your terminal at the time.
salamandersauce 5y ago
Text files. ASCII text. The same page has a link to a Project Gutenberg book about the first 45 years of digitizing ebooks. First document he did was the U.S Declaration of Independence hand typed on a teletype. They didn't get a scanner and OCR until the 90s and didn't move to HTML until then either.
- bambax 5y ago
  Okay... but how is a text file an "ebook"? I'm not sure I understand it today, so I certainly will not blame anyone for not understanding it at the time ;-)
  - mavhc 5y ago
    It's a book, and it's electronic
  - m12k 5y ago
    I mean, if you put all the text from a book into a txt file, how is it not an ebook? Does being an "ebook" come from being a digital representation of a book, or is it a reserved title for something in a specific file format created for the purpose such as .epub or .mobi? As far as I know ebook just means electronic book, and a txt file can check both those boxes if it has the right content.
    - bambax 5y ago
      I answered below, but my point is it's hard to conceptualize an "ebook" without an ebook reader. (Of course the technical format is irrelevant.)
      - jhbadger 5y ago
        But there are lots of things you can do with an ebook besides read it. One thing that started earlier than people might think is "digital humanities"; that is literary analysis by computer. You could do things like look at word usage in a text by an unknown author and compare it to word usages by known authors and try to identify the author. Or you could compare versions of a text and basically make an evolutionary tree of changes and use this to infer what the original version was like. Of course people had been doing these things by hand, but having computer readable ebooks made it possible to write programs to do them.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wazoox 5y ago
I clearly remember devices marketed as digital books in the early 90s, but back around the time we were both born it was just about reading an ascii file on a glass teletype I suppose :)
dredmorbius 5y ago
Michael Hart's vision was for a future in which computing costs were dramatically lower, access and availability vastly higher. Presentation capabilities of the then-current era were far less a concern. His goal was to create the digital files themselves, which once they existed in digital form could be endlessly replicated at no cost: Michael decided there was nothing he could do, in the way of “normal computing,” that would repay the huge value of the computer time he had been given … so he had to create $100,000,000 worth of value in some other manner. An hour and 47 minutes later, he announced that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. He then proceeded to type in the “Declaration of Independence” and tried to send it to everyone on the networks … which can only be described today as a not so narrow miss at creating an early version of what was later called the “Internet Virus.” A friendly dissuasion from this yielded the first posting of a document in electronic text, and Project Gutenberg was born as Michael stated that he had “earned” the $100,000,000 because a copy of the Declaration of Independence would eventually be an electronic fixture in the computer libraries of 100,000,000 of the computer users of the future. In 1971, access would have required mainframe access, either on a line printer or via one of the early CRT-based computer terminals. This Seattle Computer Museum image shows the less-interesting side of the terminal: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/LCM_-_Xerox_Sigma_9_%28right%29_and_related_equipment_-_01.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/LCM_-_Xe... (From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDS_Sigma_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDS_Sigma_series) Apparently the Tektronix 4010 was used with the SDS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4010 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Tektronix_4014.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Tektroni... On an IBM platform (and possibly others), the IBM 2250, first released in 1964: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250
mdp2021 5y ago
> I really don't understand what [the idea of an electronic book] could have meant then Files containing text, electronically accessible, and allowing preservation through automation as files allow (transmission, duplication, versatile electronic storage).

by bambax 5y ago

simias 5y ago

What do you mean by "destructively"?

salamandersauce 5y ago
It's easier to scan or photograph loose sheets than a bound book. If you want to do it fast it's much easier to cut the pages out of the bindings.
bambax 5y ago
They destroyed the books to scan them. They cut the pages to send them to a scanner, and discarded them afterwards. It was a horrible tragedy.
- jmbwell 5y ago
  Indeed, the book scanning project at Google at one point involved removing the spine of a book with a bandsaw, then scanning the loose pages. For fun, they collected the sawed-off spines and glued them to boards fashioned to look like bookcases. The office looked like a library, but there were no books on the "shelves," only spines.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Generally: unbinding the leaves of a book so that they can be more easily handled by a scanner, often including an automated feeder. The simplest method is to simply cut off the binding (a powered paper cutter can do this in an instant). The alternative is nondestructive scanning, where the binding and publication as a whole remain intact. This is typically performed using flatbed scanners, angled scanners (the book is either face up or face down on a scanning bed which typically forms a ~90 degree angle), automated feeders which incorporate page turning (via numerous methods), or face-up scanning with digital deconvolution of page distortions. Higher speed presents higher risks of both poor / missed scans, and damaging original materials. Methods should be tuned to the materials, their intrinsic value and/or uniqueness, and end goals. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning#Destructive_scanning_methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning#Destructive_scan... There are numerous book-scanning projects with YouTube videos of their methods. Typical rates range from ~300 -- 3,000 pages/hour, with 1,000 pp/hr being a good middling rate. DIY 1,000 pp/h https://youtube.com/watch?v=ne-h7FTMZBk https://youtube.com/watch?v=ne-h7FTMZBk https://youtube.com/watch?v=RdLcrNeWjIs https://youtube.com/watch?v=RdLcrNeWjIs Commercial, manual page turning: https://youtube.com/watch?v=adQjU9JAWfw https://youtube.com/watch?v=adQjU9JAWfw 3,000 pp/h vacuum page turning https://youtube.com/watch?v=cmhIJOqepVU https://youtube.com/watch?v=cmhIJOqepVU ... capable of managing very thick volumes: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SdipuAuWsEs https://youtube.com/watch?v=SdipuAuWsEs Google fully automated linear scanbot: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4JuoOaL11bw https://youtube.com/watch?v=4JuoOaL11bw Face-up, no-platten, with deconvolution: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iAmrch_1f2U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iAmrch_1f2U

SapporoChris 5y ago

You need to follow the links to get the details. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27045/pg27045.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27045/pg27045.html "On July 4, 1971, on Independence Day, Michael keyed in The United States Declaration of Independence (signed on July 4, 1776) to the mainframe he was using." As for what it looked like, well that would depend on your terminal at the time.

salamandersauce 5y ago

Text files. ASCII text. The same page has a link to a Project Gutenberg book about the first 45 years of digitizing ebooks. First document he did was the U.S Declaration of Independence hand typed on a teletype. They didn't get a scanner and OCR until the 90s and didn't move to HTML until then either.

bambax 5y ago
Okay... but how is a text file an "ebook"? I'm not sure I understand it today, so I certainly will not blame anyone for not understanding it at the time ;-)
- mavhc 5y ago
  It's a book, and it's electronic
- m12k 5y ago
  I mean, if you put all the text from a book into a txt file, how is it not an ebook? Does being an "ebook" come from being a digital representation of a book, or is it a reserved title for something in a specific file format created for the purpose such as .epub or .mobi? As far as I know ebook just means electronic book, and a txt file can check both those boxes if it has the right content.
  - bambax 5y ago
    I answered below, but my point is it's hard to conceptualize an "ebook" without an ebook reader. (Of course the technical format is irrelevant.)
    - jhbadger 5y ago
      But there are lots of things you can do with an ebook besides read it. One thing that started earlier than people might think is "digital humanities"; that is literary analysis by computer. You could do things like look at word usage in a text by an unknown author and compare it to word usages by known authors and try to identify the author. Or you could compare versions of a text and basically make an evolutionary tree of changes and use this to infer what the original version was like. Of course people had been doing these things by hand, but having computer readable ebooks made it possible to write programs to do them.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

wazoox 5y ago

I clearly remember devices marketed as digital books in the early 90s, but back around the time we were both born it was just about reading an ascii file on a glass teletype I suppose :)

dredmorbius 5y ago

Michael Hart's vision was for a future in which computing costs were dramatically lower, access and availability vastly higher. Presentation capabilities of the then-current era were far less a concern. His goal was to create the digital files themselves, which once they existed in digital form could be endlessly replicated at no cost: Michael decided there was nothing he could do, in the way of “normal computing,” that would repay the huge value of the computer time he had been given … so he had to create $100,000,000 worth of value in some other manner. An hour and 47 minutes later, he announced that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. He then proceeded to type in the “Declaration of Independence” and tried to send it to everyone on the networks … which can only be described today as a not so narrow miss at creating an early version of what was later called the “Internet Virus.” A friendly dissuasion from this yielded the first posting of a document in electronic text, and Project Gutenberg was born as Michael stated that he had “earned” the $100,000,000 because a copy of the Declaration of Independence would eventually be an electronic fixture in the computer libraries of 100,000,000 of the computer users of the future. In 1971, access would have required mainframe access, either on a line printer or via one of the early CRT-based computer terminals. This Seattle Computer Museum image shows the less-interesting side of the terminal: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/LCM_-_Xerox_Sigma_9_%28right%29_and_related_equipment_-_01.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/LCM_-_Xe... (From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDS_Sigma_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDS_Sigma_series) Apparently the Tektronix 4010 was used with the SDS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4010 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Tektronix_4014.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Tektroni... On an IBM platform (and possibly others), the IBM 2250, first released in 1964: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250

mdp2021 5y ago

> I really don't understand what [the idea of an electronic book] could have meant then Files containing text, electronically accessible, and allowing preservation through automation as files allow (transmission, duplication, versatile electronic storage).