i actually worked in the special collection division of michigan state universitys library in the spring and summer of 1997. they were using a commercial device

i actually worked in the special collection division of michigan state universitys library in the spring and summer of 1997. they were using a commercial device, whose name escapes me, that allowed the book to lay flat and be imaged from above. the software accounted for the curvature of the page for ocr purposes. judging from the posted pictures in the article, the google device seems more elaborate with stereo cameras in the infrared spectrum. bottom line, though, is that people have been digitizing books for a long time before google came along. sure, google is doing it on a larger scale with more resources at their disposal but it is not new to the dozens and hundreds of academic libraries around the world. a simple search for overhead book scanners returns a ton of links, including this one to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning.