RESEARCHER Joseph Jacobson has come up with a method of embedding particles in paper to make what he calls an "electronic book", and plans to have a prototype ready within 18 months.
The device would pack a big memory - Jacobson claims it will be able to store about 500 works of several hundred pages each - and have the weight and feel of a traditional, ink on paper book. Text could be taken directly from the Internet. According to Jacobson, who works in MIT'S Media Lab in Boston, it would take just one minute to download a work such as Moby Dick.
The technology means that a library of books or other written material could be contained in a single electronic volume. When a button was pressed, the "electronic ink" inside the device would be transformed in seconds, turning a copy of War and Peace, for example, into The Client.
Paper is not the only possible medium. Jacobson also sees demand for print on ultra thin acrylic sheets. "That way you could take the book to the beach and not worry about getting it wet," he says. If everything goes to plan, analysts say the new product could transform the multimedia revolution. It also has profound implications for journalism.
Regular network users have two common complaints first, that it is hugely tiresome to read things on a screen second that computers are not as portable ash books, magazines or newspapers. "These hurdles have yet to be cleared to make the multimedia reading experience enjoyable" says Edward Julian, a multimedia analyst at International Data Corporation.
Books have other advantages over computer screens as well. They can be thumbed through in a way that is difficult to do with text on a screen. And readers can make notes in the margins of books far more easily on paper.
The electronic book project, which is being designed for commercial use, is being funded by Gruppo Grauso and the Things That Think Consortium, which funds much of the Media Lab's work. Jacobson says the volume will probably retail for about $2 to $4 per reusable page.
He is not the first researcher to tackle digital ink. In 1962, scientists came up with particles that could be flipped with magnets to create different designs, while in 1977 Xerox embedded electronic particles on thick rubber sheets. These inventions were seriously flawed, however. The resolution of the ink was poor, making the print difficult to read, and the media were too thick and bulky for the electronic ink to be of much use.
Liquid crystals - used in standard laptops - are a form of digital ink that transformed the computer market, allowing for smaller, more portable devices. Liquid crystals are unstable, however, and need thousands of transistors behind them providing a constant electronic charge to keep the molecules in place. For that reason, they cannot be used on a surface as thin as paper.
Jacobson says the particles he has created for the project are small and stable enough to be put on paper. The particles, at 40 microns, are essentially bicoloured spheres that can be rotated through small amounts of electronic charge to create different patterns, which give the illusion of ink on paper.
He admits there may be some problems in applying his technology. One question is how to deal with the copyright on electronic books. "One of the first uses may be to download from the World Wide Web 500 copies of presecond World War titles," he says. "That way we wouldn't have to deal with royalties."
The printing industry is also interested in the technology. "We could see a demand for textbooks with charts and tables geared specifically to certain students, for instance," says John Tanelli, senior vice president of technology at printer R. R. Donnelley. "The textbooks could be altered and undated more easily."