May 7, 2011 at 14:29History of e-books: Firstborn
Hello, Habr.
I have been familiar with e-books for almost 6 years. In general, I am a fan of this movement and have been using them since 2006.
Few fans of reading know that before the heyday of the E-Ink era, there was another generation of e-books. It starts with a unique product released by NuvoMedia in 1998, the Rocket Ebook.
Called the “Rocket” in the CIS, the Rocket Ebook has largely defined the book distribution model and has shown that technology can provide an alternative to almost everything.
I ask everyone to cat.
Specifications, perhaps today will not impress anyone:
About 30 books were inserted at a time into the memory of the coolest modification of the Rocket (with 32 MB of memory), which at that time was a very cool indicator. The portable class was just in its infancy, and this device was considered quite easy.
A solid, even by today's standards, operating time was provided by a huge battery that weighed about 300 grams (it was assembled from 6 segments the size of a regular finger-type battery).
Communication with the PC was carried out either through the infrared channel, or through the COM port through the cradle.
Through it, the built-in battery was also charged (it can also be done directly through the connector on the end of the device).
To place content on the device, a special Rocket
Librarian program was used .
Specially for the Rocket, one of the first electronic RB book formats was developed, based on HTML markup, it compares favorably with the most common TXT at that time by the presence of styles and support for simple illustrations (they were limited by the RocketBook software itself, which supported only two-bit monochrome drawings)
Nowadays, this format can still be found in two libraries: Aldebaran and Buckland . In principle, there are several different applications for preparing RB books: Ebukariy and perhaps BookDesigner (http://www.bookdesigner.org/). The latter program is just a monster of conversion, layout and preparation of the text and deserves a separate article.
The screen in the device is made by the Japanese company Sharp. It is made in contrast to modern TFT readers in monochrome. Among the fans of the book of that time there are legends about the contrast of the display, but at the moment it is much inferior to the latest generation of E-Ink. But the book has a clear advantage - relatively uniform illumination of white. You have to read with the backlight on, but a wide range of adjustment allows you to read comfortably even in complete darkness. A cool feature of the book is that it can be used as a flashlight when you get to the toilet at night :).
Those who are interested can use the Rocket emulator, which will fully appreciate the functionality of the software in this book.
Download link. You can download the same files on this archive .
The book was published from 1998 to 1999. In 1999, NuvoMedia was faced with the problem of lack of content, and was absorbed by GemStar.
I will cite a small extract from an article in 2002 on the situation that occurred in 1999.
Meanwhile (we did not know about it) NuvoMedia, almost completely exhausted its funds and was on the verge of bankruptcy. The growth in device and content sales was too slow to encourage investors. The Rocket eBook was a breakthrough (translator's note: for today, September 2002, this device remains the best, apart from the MyFriend mentioned below, which costs ~ 8 times more), and the community around the device has already grown stronger, but the company has not managed to solve the chicken problem and eggs: too few devices on the market will not force publishers to mass-produce texts. Too little content makes devices less attractive to customers. Investors, one after another, lost faith in the company. By this time, Wall Street was despondent, and the only way out was to see the sale of NuvoMedia to a large company as a means of getting their money back.Full article
This was the end of the Rocket era, but almost the entire company remained to develop the product further. In 2000, the REB 1100 model was released, featuring significantly reduced weight and improved performance.
In the next article, I want to give a complete overview of this model, which I am the owner of.
Sources:
Jim's Homeplace
The-Ebook
Personal experience
I would like to express special thanks to
Alexander Kovalev, Andrei Sanjur and my parents, thanks to whom I became the owner of my first e-book.
Vladimir Prokhorenkov for his wonderful resource.
And of course, to all lovers of reading from the The-Ebook forum
I have been familiar with e-books for almost 6 years. In general, I am a fan of this movement and have been using them since 2006.
Few fans of reading know that before the heyday of the E-Ink era, there was another generation of e-books. It starts with a unique product released by NuvoMedia in 1998, the Rocket Ebook.
Called the “Rocket” in the CIS, the Rocket Ebook has largely defined the book distribution model and has shown that technology can provide an alternative to almost everything.
I ask everyone to cat.
Specifications, perhaps today will not impress anyone:
| Weight | 590 grams |
| Dimensions | 190x130x35 mm |
| File format | Own (* .RB) |
| Memory | 4-8 MB (up to 32 in the Pro version) |
| CPU | Cirrus Logic ARM-7 |
| Nutrition | Built-in metal hydride battery |
| Battery life | Up to 40 hours |
| Communications | COM port (cradle), IrDA |
| Screen | Touch monochrome LCD, 480x320 pixels, diagonal of 140 mm |
| Backlight | White, adjustable in steps |
| Entering Information | Handwritten or using the virtual keyboard |
| Russification | No official, free unofficial firmware available |
| Service Functions | Rotate text by an angle multiple of 90 °, bookmarks, underline a fragment of text, enter a comment, full-text search. |
About 30 books were inserted at a time into the memory of the coolest modification of the Rocket (with 32 MB of memory), which at that time was a very cool indicator. The portable class was just in its infancy, and this device was considered quite easy.
A solid, even by today's standards, operating time was provided by a huge battery that weighed about 300 grams (it was assembled from 6 segments the size of a regular finger-type battery).
Communication with the PC was carried out either through the infrared channel, or through the COM port through the cradle.
Through it, the built-in battery was also charged (it can also be done directly through the connector on the end of the device).
To place content on the device, a special Rocket
Librarian program was used .
Specially for the Rocket, one of the first electronic RB book formats was developed, based on HTML markup, it compares favorably with the most common TXT at that time by the presence of styles and support for simple illustrations (they were limited by the RocketBook software itself, which supported only two-bit monochrome drawings)
Nowadays, this format can still be found in two libraries: Aldebaran and Buckland . In principle, there are several different applications for preparing RB books: Ebukariy and perhaps BookDesigner (http://www.bookdesigner.org/). The latter program is just a monster of conversion, layout and preparation of the text and deserves a separate article.
The screen in the device is made by the Japanese company Sharp. It is made in contrast to modern TFT readers in monochrome. Among the fans of the book of that time there are legends about the contrast of the display, but at the moment it is much inferior to the latest generation of E-Ink. But the book has a clear advantage - relatively uniform illumination of white. You have to read with the backlight on, but a wide range of adjustment allows you to read comfortably even in complete darkness. A cool feature of the book is that it can be used as a flashlight when you get to the toilet at night :).
Those who are interested can use the Rocket emulator, which will fully appreciate the functionality of the software in this book.
Download link. You can download the same files on this archive .
The book was published from 1998 to 1999. In 1999, NuvoMedia was faced with the problem of lack of content, and was absorbed by GemStar.
I will cite a small extract from an article in 2002 on the situation that occurred in 1999.
Meanwhile (we did not know about it) NuvoMedia, almost completely exhausted its funds and was on the verge of bankruptcy. The growth in device and content sales was too slow to encourage investors. The Rocket eBook was a breakthrough (translator's note: for today, September 2002, this device remains the best, apart from the MyFriend mentioned below, which costs ~ 8 times more), and the community around the device has already grown stronger, but the company has not managed to solve the chicken problem and eggs: too few devices on the market will not force publishers to mass-produce texts. Too little content makes devices less attractive to customers. Investors, one after another, lost faith in the company. By this time, Wall Street was despondent, and the only way out was to see the sale of NuvoMedia to a large company as a means of getting their money back.Full article
This was the end of the Rocket era, but almost the entire company remained to develop the product further. In 2000, the REB 1100 model was released, featuring significantly reduced weight and improved performance.
In the next article, I want to give a complete overview of this model, which I am the owner of.
Sources:
Jim's Homeplace
The-Ebook
Personal experience
I would like to express special thanks to
Alexander Kovalev, Andrei Sanjur and my parents, thanks to whom I became the owner of my first e-book.
Vladimir Prokhorenkov for his wonderful resource.
And of course, to all lovers of reading from the The-Ebook forum