[HN Gopher] 50 years of eBooks: 1971-2021
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50 years of eBooks: 1971-2021
Author : dredmorbius
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-12-02 13:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gutenberg.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gutenberg.org)
| leemailll wrote:
| Gutenberg project was an amazing finding for me in the 90s. It's
| a pity after bought the first kindle I almost totally forgot it.
| yeetman21 wrote:
| Gutenberg is nice, but there is also libgen for books that are
| not available on Gutenberg
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I agree, and rely very heavily on LibGen.
|
| That said, Project Gutenberg and Michael Hart's vision and
| effort are iconic and really cannot be overstated. LibGen and
| its ilk owe a huge debt to his work.
| timonoko wrote:
| Achually 30 years as HP100LX was the first pocketable device, you
| can turn sideways and read like a book, with "Vertical Reader" at
| http://mizj.com/ .
| SapporoChris wrote:
| A noteable achievement, but it doesn't contradict the article.
| Perhaps HP100LX fits your definition of an eBook and the prior
| work does not, can you explain why?
| timonoko wrote:
| Total replacement of the concept "book". Fits into your
| pocket and so on.
|
| 10 Megabytes was the maximum disk at the time of 1992 costing
| 1000 gringo dolares. With careful zipping it was hundreds of
| books.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| The Sony Data Discman predates the HP by years. This is
| about eBooks as a concept/file and what Project Gutenberg
| was doing and not readers anyways.
| timonoko wrote:
| I tried that too. It was just horrible. If we drop the
| pocketable feature, Data General One was quite good
| ebook. It was 1982 maybe.
| bambax wrote:
| 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.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _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).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 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_-_Xe...
|
| (From: 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://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
| simias wrote:
| What do you mean by "destructively"?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 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_
| 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=RdLcrNeWjIs
|
| Commercial, manual page turning:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=adQjU9JAWfw
|
| 3,000 pp/h vacuum page turning
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=cmhIJOqepVU
|
| ... capable of managing very thick volumes:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=SdipuAuWsEs
|
| Google fully automated linear scanbot:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=4JuoOaL11bw
|
| Face-up, no-platten, with deconvolution:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iAmrch_1f2U
| bambax wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| 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.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| 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.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Actually, EBCDIC, which was the character encoding used on
| the SDS Sigma series computer Hart first had access to. But
| yes, flatfile text documents.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDS_Sigma_series
|
| There's a slightly more technical history linked from the
| submitted article:
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/about/background/history_and_philo.
| ..
| bambax wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's a book, and it's electronic
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Digitised text is the essence of a book.
|
| Hart's goal wasn't hardware. It was the (compartively)
| harder task of _getting text into digital format_.
|
| Written language is highly presentation-independent.
| bambax wrote:
| Yeah, you're right, but that's what's difficult for me to
| accept. A traditional book is a piece of hardware. It's a
| bunch of paper pages tied together, with some content
| printed on the pages.
|
| If you separate the content from the hardware, you hardly
| have a "book", e- or not. You have some content floating
| around, and big machines that are difficult to use and
| even more difficult to access (cost, scarcity, location)
| to read it.
|
| That's probably the genius of inventors: they see things
| that aren't there.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| A "book" is a container for "text" - a support that can
| be made metaphorically akin to light (beech) bark (the
| "book") as a container for some weaving of expression of
| ideas (the "text"), is such.
|
| The container could be whatever. If there exists a text,
| there probably exists a book (the content, in fact, is
| not <<floating around>>). If that is magnetic tape, so be
| it. And if that is an abstraction for a physical
| container - a file, i.e. a labelled pointer to an array
| of data -, again, so be it.
|
| The file is the book; its physicality - irrelevant and
| interchangeable, but given - could be the magnetic tape,
| cards etc. that host it.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Etymological note: _book_ itself seems to come from the
| beech tree, and referred originally to tablets inscribed
| on wood.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/book
|
| It's also worth noting that what we now refer to as a
| "book" is more properly a _codex_ , also ultimately from
| a reference to a tree trunk, but defined as a collection
| of leaves of paper or parchment (or folios or signatures)
| sewn into a binding with covers, as distinguished from a
| _scroll_.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/codex
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/code
|
| And of course, scrolls and tablets were the original
| forms of _books_.
|
| The notion that a _book_ must be a specific physical
| representation of paper, binding, and covers, or even
| physical is ... at odds with origin and usage.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _book itself seems to come from the beech tree_
|
| I wrote that explicitly ;)
|
| Note also the other side: something is a "text" when it
| is _textile_ in quality, in the context of elaborating
| the expression of ideas: you "weave" the expressions of
| your thoughts into a "text".
|
| Also note that " _liber_ " means bark like 'book' does
| (though on the technical, craft side of "peeling"), and
| "paper" clearly refers to papyrus.
|
| You have terms for the container and terms for the
| content. The "book" is not a <<specific physical
| representation>>, but is the side of the container.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Gah! I've reached the age when writing is easier than
| reading .... Sorry!
|
| "Textile" (a woven fabric) is another great one, yes,
| thanks.
|
| Diving into other etymologies and origins of other words
| based around information (literally, _to form an
| impression_ ), _truth_ and _trust_ , etc., is
| interesting. Many of the words for the most ephemeral
| concepts are deeply ... rooted ... in the profoundly
| physical, tactile, and material.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _interesting_
|
| To my "school", a necessary duty :)
|
| > _in the profoundly physical, tactile, and material_
|
| That depends. Some scholars identify a number of key
| concepts as construction blocks of their many derived
| terms. Not all of them are concrete - some are extremely
| subtle (also to be productive of so many different, yet
| related concepts).
|
| For example, you write 'physical': some identify the root
| of that term in an immaterial concept of a dynamic
| principle, as if expressed by the explosive phoneme, that
| pertains immediately to "physical", "future", "foliage"
| in this construction assumed to express a "spawning".
| Similarly to 'material' ("measure", "mathematics"...),
| that some see as coming from the key root concept of
| limited extensions.
|
| In the development of the terms and idea, concretion and
| abstraction may follow each other ("measure", "moon",
| "month"...).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| You've had the answer, several times.
|
| You don't like it.
|
| The problem doesn't lie with the answer.
| bambax wrote:
| I'm not arguing. I'm just trying to explain my gut
| reaction. But it's really not important.
| sleightofmind wrote:
| I feel for your "gut". Often, if I'm learning a new math
| concept, my head says, "Yeah, I can do that manipulation
| just fine," but my gut says, "Something's not right here.
| Nope. Uh huh. Don't like it." And it's very hard to shake
| gut reactions be they true or false.
|
| Here's a rhetorical question: When I read a Kindle-format
| book from Amazon on the Kindle Cloud Reading app on my
| laptop, what did I just read? Was it an eBook or not? If
| not, was it a book in any sense? If someone asks, "Did
| you read the book, The Cuckoo's Egg?" I'd answer yes,
| even though I read it electronically -- which is, I
| presume what the e in eBook stands for. Or do I answer,
| "No," because it was just digital data on a computer --
| absent a standalone eBook device?
|
| I have an eBook reader that came as part of the Calibre
| package, at least they call it an eBook reader -- it's
| just a program to read epubs. Is it is, or is it ain't an
| eBook reader?
| m12k wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.)
| [deleted]
| wazoox wrote:
| 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
| :)
| SapporoChris wrote:
| You need to follow the links to get the details.
| 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.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I have to say, learning I could download books off the internet
| and read them on my Palm was a transformative experience as a
| child.
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(page generated 2021-12-02 23:04 UTC)