December 20, 2004  

Accessing a book like a hard drive

If there’s a book that I remember more vividly than most from my childhood it has to be Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan. The story is kicked off by the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human skeleton in a spacesuit on the moon. The ancient astronaut also had some effects with him, including a book. The scientists use a scanner that can read the book without opening its very brittle, damaged pages, basically peering into and reconstructing the sheets at variable depths. I always thought that was so cool.

Turns out this is no longer a fictional technology. Researchers at the University of Kentucky have figured out how to do it. Imagine being able to scan like this on a bookshelf- or library-wide scale, gulping down petabytes of data without cracking into the books themselves. (Via MGK. Thanks Matt!)

2 Responses to “Accessing a book like a hard drive”

  1. Remolino says :

    D�chiffrer l’ind�chiffrable…

    D�chiffrer un manuscrit repli� sur lui-m�me depuis des si�cles… sans m�me le d�rouler. C’est l’invraisemblable d�fi qu’a relev� l’�quipe de Brent Seales, de l’Universit� du Kentucky. Bienvenue dans l’univers fantastique de Borges, Marcel Aym�, de de…

  2. Remolino says :

    D�chiffrer l’ind�chiffrable…

    D�chiffrer un manuscrit repli� sur lui-m�me depuis des si�cles… sans m�me le d�rouler. C’est l’invraisemblable d�fi qu’a relev� l’�quipe de Brent Seales, de l’Universit� du Kentucky. Bienvenue dans l’univers fantastique de Borges, Marcel Aym�, de Jam…