1985 The Electronic Book

United States Patent 4985697

A method for compiling and presenting educational material on an electronic book is disclosed. A set of information requiring a first level of comprehension is created at a terminal or provided from a pre-existing data base. The set of information is examined for words which require a higher level of comprehension. Different types of explanatory information are created for such words and are tagged to the words so that they can be immediately called up when the word is later presented. The compiled first set of information at a first level of comprehension is a first modality. Additional modalities at different levels of comprehension or simply adjusted for different learning styles are also prepared. Each modality is cross-indexed to the other modality at a conceptual meaning level.

Note: the Electronic Book enabled thinking about a 'learner interface' that transcended the hardware and led to Electronic Publishing For Learning

Sampling of letters of interest: Dec 86 Resource Dissemination Corp. - Dec 86 Mt. Abraham High - Jan 87 United States Information Agency - Jan 87 Xpress Information Services - Jan 87 LaPlante & Associations - Jan 87 Stratham School

written in 1986 by Michael S. Malone, Host of the PBS show "Malone' and David Boulton

Where lies the boundary line between science fiction and science fact? The business man knows too well that the boundary is determined by corporate vision and initiative. Science and technology have rendered the fantasy of recent years into practical reality. Corporate economic survival and expansion are therefore coupled with knowing where that boundary lies.

The personal computer industry is slumping and chip manufacturers are cutting back. Silicon Valley, the nation's leader in advanced technological innovation and production is in an economic crisis. It is time to turn the situation around. By using the imaginative capacity that has made it a leader in the first place, the computer industry needs to step outside of its narrow window of contemporary concerns and view the world of five and ten years down the road. We must integrate the direction of technology with the expanding needs of the populace to visualize the commercial successes of tomorrow. Once so envisioned, corporate initiative makes or breaks profitable involvement.

In the past, the use of calculators and digital watches have exploded, and today it is personal computers. The consumer electronics market is the engine driving manufacturing and development costs down while increasing consumer familiarity with, and need for, continued improvement and innovation. The video recorder, satellite television and audio disc are examples of the myriad social and personal habit changes introduced by technology which was itself pioneered by the exponential accumulation of intelligence.

Science fiction writers have for years alluded to the day when voluminous libraries of books will be reduced to compact electronic scenarios. The business world and populace at large know, despite the nostalgia associated with books, ultimately, a more economic and convenient recording and accessing methodology will evolve.

Everyone is familiar by now with the capabilities of personal computers even if incapable of taking advantage of them. PC's allow the users to become more efficient in thousands of endeavors. Their success in more efficiently processing `paperwork' is, in fact, a major component of their allure. But for all the great things PC's can do, there remains a huge void, a void created by the need to read. We are a reading society. The student learns by reading, the business man profits by reading and the professional processes tons of information by reading. In short, knowledge acquisition is dependent on reading.

But reading is bulky and expensive. Despite the efficiency of computers, we do not use them to read, they are just not comfortable. We prefer the ability to lay down, to kick back to read. Over breakfast, on the airplane, between classes, and in the strangest positions we read. You can't take your PC into the bathtub. Even the most compact of portables is not designed for reading. We demand our comfort, we need our books, our compendiums.

What if the comfort and convenience of a book were available electronically? What if we eliminated the bulk of books without sacrificing the availability of information at the user level? Imagine a `book' that when opened reveals a display screen on one side and a tactile sense control board on the other. Envision this `book' containing volumes of conventional books yet allowing for traditional `page turning' by calling up locations and pages, touch one sensor and the page advances or backs up. Imagine a load system for this book which allows the data to be accessed from digital archives, a PC, a telephone, a radio, or an economical audio cassette. Imagine students carrying six volumes home from the library in one `book' or lawyers loading volumes of briefs over the phone. While the paper industry might not be pleased with such imaginings, every reader would be pleased with the phenomenal cost savings and storage convenience.

Imagine no more, CompuRead is such a book. Having a width and length similar to a conventional book, the exterior of the CompuRead book appears traditional. However, inside it is entirely different, with the right side a liquid crystal display, and the left a tactile control system and a data loading cassette mechanism. The control system manipulates the percentage of page viewed, the character size and type, the content access by page numbers. The more advanced features such as notepad or data entry and audio/video presentation are also optionally incorporated. The reader accesses the book's chapter and page by setting up the review parameters and then simply touches the advance or back up sensors while reading away.

CompuRead's concept is essentially comprised of existing technologies brought to a focus point never before envisioned. Due to this underlying composition CompuRead's concepts are quickly grasped by the layperson, and fully appreciated by the technically adept. Every technology employed within the `book' is provided a new and vital application market thus rendering the entire concept beneficial to the users and the currently slumping component suppliers.

While data acquisition can be accomplished by virtually all notable computer sources, the economy of an entirely new approach underlies CompuRead's broad utility. By assigning a hex code system to a simple alternating current, analog signal, five cycles represent the capacity to incorporate up to 128 alphabetical, numerical or operational symbols. At the low end rate of a 10khz frequency, text, graphics, and instructional code can be stored at a density that enables a forty cent cassette tape to hold 7,200,000 characters, the equivalent of six average sized text books. This simplistic yet novel approach combines with the books digital processor and LCD display to provide an otherwise impractical electronic book.

The digital processor allows for the spooling of a RAM buffer file which contains the equivalent of chapters. This system controls tape location and controlling consistent with its buffer loading. By using audio tapes the system can record books from any number of sources, without the need of a modem. The user has the flexibility of saving tapes to build a library or recording continuously over old material.

Considering the potential applications and the direction of technology and consumerism, CompuRead's ability to benefit people and generate income insure its value and success. Thousands of years ago people first used symbols to share their thoughts. Hundreds of years ago the printing press extended these thoughts to everyone. Today the computer can usher reading into the year 2000. CompuRead is a concept whose time has come. Open the window of the mind and let science fiction exist.

The educational community in general, and the students in particular, are the prime benefactors of the CompuRead Electronic Book. The Book's many benefits provide enhancement to the full spectrum of education.

The high cost of publishing is a major factor behind gross delays in educational assimilation of both new information and presentation techniques. Our world is in an era of exponential growth in scientific, technological, and social interactions. All indications are that this explosive rate will continue to increase. Influenced by this continuous revolution in human understanding an enlightened society must provide an educational system that offers its students and faculty a rapid means of obtaining current information. It has become paramount that such an educational system provide the knowledge and understanding to synchronize the emerging student with the contemporary society, in which he must work and live.

Another significant factor relating to the general educational benefit is a new approach to the territorial differences over desired subject mater. Recently, as demonstrated in the latest battle over evolution vs creation, there has been quite a debate over regional differences. The conflicts are not unique and always represent economics rather than simply the basic curriculum. For example, if 100 districts buy the same book, the volume is high and the price is consequently much lower. Conversely an individual district is prohibited from developing its own curriculum by the volume consensus necassary for publishing. It is obvious then that the disagreement over curriculum results in higher costs to the district and, more importantly, limits the amount of information per dollar available to the student. With the concept of the CompuRead Book the content can be modified or personalized at the district level at minimal cost.

When the net cost of educational information text can be reduced while providing the student and faculty with the most contemporary information there is a strong incentive to incorporate the method. CompuRead offers these features and benefits to all levels of education.

In grade school the book will easily contain the entire school years textual requirement and the teacher can simply request the student to select his assignments. The ability to vary the text size and font allows the student to compensate for his growing reading skill. Children with partial vision difficulties no longer need to be isolated or require special books, or reading apparatus.

Other modular enhancements would allow the book to offer confirmation of reading skills such as speed and comprehension. One such module will allow the addition of an audio track to assist the student in the proper pronunciation and use of letters and words, while another utilizes the Book's existing components and provides a calculator capability. Additional or special instruction from the teacher to a class, or individual student, could be downloaded from any computer and be loaded into the book at his desk. In the case of prolonged illness, a student can receive his teachers instructions over the telephone line.

In an age of a growing human association with electronic aides the student is introduced early to the ease of use, and the required dexterity of future computer related devices.

The junior high and high school faculty and students would benefit from all the above, and with the additions of selected optional modules, would begin to acclimate to true two-way data processing techniques. Certainly by the time a student reaches high school and begins to choose and focus on an intended major, his need of contemporary data is imperative.

It is in college that the cost of text books become critical. Here the student must have the latest information available in his chosen field. At this level the publishing turnover is frequent, however the cost per book reflects the very limited volume per edition. At this point the benefits of the CompuRead Book are clearly justified by the reduced costs to the college and student.

One significant application of the CompuRead Book is the simplicity it lends to efficient automatic testing and instructional management. A school with a basic "PC" level computer can be easily interfaced through economical audio components to provide teachers with automatic grading through the central computer.

Tests that can be answered by multiple choice, true or false, or by numerals, can all be formatted and processed by the school's PC computer. Once the test is resident within the school's PC, the CompuRead converter module will produce the equivalent analog signal for recording onto the tape cassette.

The teacher needs only play the tape on his classroom player and the entire classroom's books will be loaded with the test. The students then send their test answers back to the teacher who records them and subsequently downloads them to the PC. Software provided by CompuRead will enable the teacher to easily personalize a criteria referenced automatic grading system. With emphasis on the selected criteria the program in turn produces a file and printout summary with each student name, test score, and grade curve.

At all levels of the educational system the CompuRead Book will provide cost savings, current information, classroom or district level formatting, and unheard of reference capability. Entire encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesaurus and other reference compendiums can be stored and rendered accessible to the student for the cost of a few dollars ( not including copyright royalties).

Future versions will be capable of full keyboard or light pen data entry. The CompuRead Book will provide the user with features not dissimilar to a personal computer.

As the display system controller within the book will be capable of processing composite video signals, the CompuRead book provides the capabilities of a portable video monitor as well. This feature has merit as the distributor of an electronic blackboard, a personal viewer for video taped or laser disc educational programs, or for direct access and display public television workshops. The video display network can function over the same cable that alternative provides the school rooms analog data distribution.

The book's ability to aid the visually impaired through text size adjustment is both cost effective and socially preferable to the current equipment related isolation. Beyond this rather obvious advantage, the CompuRead Book offers an even more significant option. Utilizing a voice synthesis circuit, the book has the capacity to deliver a complete audio reader, driven by the same simplistic analog information technique. In short this feature would allow the blind an undreamed of economy of information.

Beyond the confines of the traditional educational scene and as years of perfecting and refining the book take place, the future applications could easily include the ultimate electronic tutor. A book, with greater dexterity within its memory, could provide a complex tree program that automatically creates the ideal presentation scenario from the student's test responses.

As relates to education and the business and entertainment spheres, the ability of the artist or writer to get published is throttled by the cost of publishing and marketing. A tremendous wealth of literary talent and business acumen is denied service to the consuming public, not on merit to society, but on profitability and conformance standards. With the introduction and acceptance of this concept, a new dimension of creativity is added to our available libraries of information. The artist or writer needs only the word processor. The publisher's role is reduced to one of editing and marketing, and yet is expanded to encompass this wider spectrum of original contributors.

In the first application paper we stated that, beyond conventional educational techniques, the book will offer automated tutoring utilizing the flag based "file retrieval" outlined in the Functional Overview section, we can install a program either directly into the digital portion, or as the leader of the tape, which allows the book autonomy over its memory selection, consistent with reader responses.

In other words the book could easily perform a sequential equivalent to file retrieval, and perform quite well in the reading context. The system, not unlike a video game, could determine its own actions by reaction to the operator. Once provided with an "if - then" tree of reactions, the book could provide the reader with a sequence of subject exposure and intensity consistent with that tree.

Within the subjects of knowledge testable with digital response, and by a progression of tests that begin with the various lowest levels and ascends to the highest, the book could be programmed by teachers or educators to respond to a series of quizzes and tests, selecting a sequence of pages that will best serve the students needs. While admittedly there is nothing like the personal touch, in classrooms of thirty or more that touch is somewhat lost anyway. Here the teacher can design a program that allows the book to react to the test answers in the most ideal way considering the nature of the errors. Each student can learn at his rate of speed and through his sequence of study. A student cannot fall behind a little in class and get discouraged, or race ahead to boredom. The pace, the subjects unfolding, and the unique ability to back - up and recover ground in a new sequence are all bonuses.

The CompuRead electronic book was designed with education in mind. While the applications of its underlying technology have significant utility in all areas of informational endeavor, the benefits can best be realized in and educational perspective. For the first time in the history of technology aided education a single system can provide the advantages of our information age, to each student, and within the amortized cost per student of the existing system. An electronic book, a limited function computer, a personal video viewer, a calculator, an adjustable size reader, an audio pronunciation tutor, an interactive tutorial system, an automated criteria driven testing system, an instructional management system, CompuRead offers all these advantages and with a cost parity to the current expense of keeping books printed.

The deeper you challenge and explore the CompuRead advantage, the more it becomes apparent that this is not just another gadget for the school systems, it is the basis for bringing education into the age of information. This is not just instructional television, or the computerized classroom, their limited performance is undermined because their utility does not address the individual student level, because they were economically impractical. CompuRead offers the advantages of all these past programs, not based on time share utility, but for every student. Enquire into the difference and join a growing league of educators who realize that this is the opportunity education has waited for.

CompuRead offers the user unprecedented efficiency in the access to all reference material. The dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, and manuals are easily incorporated into a tape to RAM routine for rapid retrieval and display of the desired information. Keying the first three letters would load the RAM with all information so prefaced and pressing the up or down key would locate any specific information. An in-depth study of dedicated potential uses yields hundreds of applications that offer immediate justification for the book.

Professionals require the ready access to all types of detailed information. The book allows the professional the ability to carry all the relative information he requires in a single volume. The book becomes his personal window into all instructional, reference, and personally accumulated `file' materials.

Medical - Patient data such as charts, personal and medical histories, and insurance information can be transferred from the central computer to the book for portable access.

Legal - Files, briefs, and reference material is available for instant recall in the office or the court room. Updated material can be transferred from office to court house by the telephone line. Down loading from law and patent libraries alone justify the book and its computer equivalent services.

Scientific - Access to reference material, formulas, papers, and articles is reduced to single book. Both additional and updated information requested from scientific sources can be easily transferred to the book. Worldwide communication for information exchange between individual scientists and their institutions will become commonplace.

General business compiles, manipulates, transfers and copies more written data than any other single community. The cost of updating and distributing business information has become a major factor in the survival of today's fast pace company.

The CompuRead Book will bridge the gap between the central, or desk top, computer and the the on-the-move individual in plant-wide or field activities requiring access to either current or archival information.

Business Managers - Will have daily updated information on every aspect of his business interest. Financial data, stock and bond information, and trends will be presented in text and graphics at a key stroke. The possibilities of a "Wall Street Journal" with the convenience and comfort of a book.

Production Managers - Will have current information on all aspects of pertinent planning and resources. All schedules, inventory levels, available manpower, and special customer instructions are readily available for assistance in reaching informed decisions.

Sales Managers - Will have access to product, individual territory, and specific salesmen performance data. Customer information, sales strategies, and price lists will be sent directly to the salesman in the field. The book provides the salesman with immediate factory information,inventories, and shipping status with a single phone call.

The advantages the CompuRead Book offers the general reading public are overwhelming in scope and magnitude. The ease of reading, cost savings, bulk reduction and access to current information will provide the average person an unprecedented vehicle to become better informed. The book would allow the reader to choose his own time, comfort level, and text size to read magazines, novels, text books, newspapers, journals, TV listings, and private group publications.

Libraries - Calling the library for listings and then down-loading selected books will be common. The library will never be out of "best sellers" or hard to keep reference material and the reader will never have a due date to influence his reading pace. The library would become a true source of public information not just a place to archive books and magazines. The visually impaired, usually limited to special books or apparatus, will be able to access all materials with the CompuRead book adjusting the displayed text for their specific needs.

Book Clubs - Book clubs who subscript to send books over the telephone or TV cable will become a practical and profitable business. The vast material of the great publishing houses will be available through local "book stores", or more accurately, computer down-loading stores. Through the use of credit card, or direct bank billing, books will be selected, transmitted, and billed in a single transaction.

Clubs and Social Groups - Current and inexpensive calendars, minutes of meetings, member lists, special events, sports, social activities, or just plain gossip, will be transmitted to local groups and members.

To understand the CompuRead Book it is necessary to approach the concept from the right perspective. At first glance the entire concept appears to be paradoxical. Since the book is both very unique and yet founded in commonplace technology it often provokes the response:"it seems to good to be true" and "if it is so good why has no one thought of it before". In order to answer these questions it is necessary to understand the basic CompuRead concept and the nature of the simple technologies employed.

To conceptualize the book it is necessary to acknowledge the difference between a `reader' and a computer. The computer is not designed to be a book and although we read off the screen this does not satisfy the requirements of a book. People do not curl up in bed with their computer. They do not read their computer in the park, on trains and planes, or in the bath tub. Students do not carry computers back and forth to school on a daily basis.

In order to define an electronic book we must address both its utility, the marketplace it will serve, and its uniqueness in comparison to devices already being manufactured. Although we have defined specific applications earlier in this presentation for now lets consider some general and obvious uses.

Generally speaking all sighted people read to one degree or another. Approximately 70% of all objective learning is achieved through reading. We read to assimilate information for our educational, vocational, and profession needs. With a scope and utility as broad as our reading society the concept of a new technology to better serve this need is justifiable.

It is with this perspective of application potential that one can separate the obvious Sci-Fi context and realize the solid value and utility of an electronic book. Having established the merit of an electronic book it remains only to verify the practical and technical requirements to solidify the CompuRead concept. Essentially then, we start with a book and then in sequence polarize the technologies.

A computer, by its definition and job description, is a processor. A method of efficiently manipulating diverse and, not necessarily, related data. Its ability to serve this function is dependant upon the technologies and concepts it employs. A computer cannot be dependant on a methodology that limits its functional charter. Those methods that require adherence to any imposed sequence constrain the ability to rapidly and randomly manipulate data, they are simply not relevant. The computer's growth as a useful tool is underpinned by the evolution of various means of expediting both the rapid access, and the randomness of coordinated data storage. Random access is the central definition of its indigenous memory and its various I/O memory devices.

With the exception of reference material, most books, electronic or otherwise, "are" books because of their sequential composition. Even reference books have a very definitive and helpful sequence in the coordinated relationship of their contents. They do not require randomness of relationship, in fact they prefer a sequential one. This distinction between computers and books is the fundamental application difference with which to categorize the two technologies. For example a cassette tape is mechanically too slow to perform the function of a disk, searching the tape as we would a disk would take too long. Yet the mechanical access disadvantage to computers is an advantage to a book.

Beyond the differences between sequential and random data storage techniques, there are other major distinctions unique to the needs of an electronic book. One is the size of its memory. A typical book can have hundreds of pages, each potentially containing four thousand characters. Assigning the traditional eight bit byte for each character requires that each typical printed book consume over a megabyte of conventional storage media, far too much for economical portability. In order for the electronic book to have practical utility it must store and allow the reading of "books" at cost levels more attractive than printing costs.

However the main reason that computer memory is so expensive is that it needs to be random. As stated, the cassette tape is sequential, and yet obviously there is more cross sectional storage area on a 10 minute tape than on a 5 inch disk. It is the sequential access requirement of tape that is limiting, not the storage capacity. As a book could best utilize the sequential nature of tape, or any other sequential storage media, CompuRead developed this advantage within the economically available technology. As this technology is "analog", the binary data from the books predominantly digital source is converted to analog. As the lowest grade of "audio cassettes" and "recorders" can easily reproduce frequencies of 10,000 cycles per second, we have adopted that rate for our preliminary purposes.

At a rate of 10,000 cycles per second, a 60 minute, 3 for a dollar audio cassette can play or record the equivalent of 20,000 bits per second. By utilizing a more appropriate "analog byte", 5 cycles (seven half cycles per character and three for distinction) provides the capacity of storing 7,200,000 characters on a 33 cent cassette tape. That character storage is sufficient to store 6 average size books on one typical cassette tape.

Historically the early computers that utilized cassette tapes were limited by two distinct factors. One we have discussed, the mechanical disadvantage of sequence. The other was the rate at which analog information could be converted to digital bits. Today, A to D and D to A converters are capable of converting megahertz let alone kilohertz into digital components.

Again, sequential data storage and retrieval, as is the utility of cassette tapes and analog signals, provide no application benefit to our digital technology - to our computers. The computer industry has few applications for sequential memory and therefore has had little justification to converge the recently advanced converter technology with the issue of data storage. The electronic book can utilize these otherwise not complimentary technologies. To do so a software routine ships the digital bytes to a converter module which superimposes the digital content with the continuous analog signal generated by a fixed rate oscillator. The result is an analog waveform, carrying digital data, that is easily manipulated by all traditional analog devices.

So far it is apparent based on the sequential nature of the book, that the expensive random access methods of typical data storage are not only not needed they are economically disadvantageous. As a continuous signal can best serve our sequential recording needs, we have through contemporary practicality settled on an analog signal. That analog approach not only underpins our signal storage, it renders the networking of data equally as advantageous.

A digital data stream requires an external interpretation, (of its change of state frequency), to discern its actual binary values. Modems perform the job of informing their counterparts as to that rate, regulating the amplitude variations accordingly.

Conversely, the analog stream contains its own indigenous translator. The carrier frequency itself identifies the change of states by its very rate. The same method most efficient for our data storage is also compatible with the most practical and economical transmission medias. Information can be exchanged with the CompuRead electronic book through virtually all analog carrier systems.

With equal ease to that of long range communication, local proximity networking, or dubbing, is accomplished. The amplitude modulated analog signal is compatible with virtually all typical audio equipment. Cabling is as simple and economical as hooking up a phonograph to an amplifier.

In conjunction with a PC or other larger archival systems, the small economical converter module produces the analog signal which can then be either, directly sent to individual books, or recorded in analog form on other sequential "mastering" devices.

In its educational application for example, students could each have their book connected into a parallel chain of simple shielded cables. The cable, being connected to any one of the aforementioned devices, allows the student to record or transmit within this parallel network. In addition to individual interaction, the schools could easily employ high speed dedicated dubbing units to further reduce their costs.

Moving from here to a more detailed review of the CompuRead book's internal composition, it is important to have recognized that the technologies employed are simple and straightforward and that only the application has any real uniqueness.

In the preceding background section we outlined the general technologies employed and made complementary by the unique requirements of the CompuRead Electronic Book. We traversed the methodology of signal storage and communication, and answered some of the questions regarding an electronic book's practicality and utility.

In order to ground the specific features and applications you have read of in the most easily perceived technological sense, it is necessary to take a quick review of the internal functions of the electronic book.

The CompuRead Electronic Book, in its preliminary form and closed state, is approximately 7 x 10 x 1.5 inches, and weighs under 2 lbs. When in use the unit exhibits a numeric entry keypad and cassette player on its left side, with a 6 x 9 inch, 80 x 50 LCD screen on the right. The cassette player includes the normal control features and position counter associated with the typical audio versions. Just below the display, two touch sensors are provided that allow the user to advance and retreat the display by preselected incremental groups.

The technology employed within the book, is quite simple and easily comprehended. As the unit is predominantly a digital display utilizing and analog signal, the constituent modules represent both technologies.

The analog inputs interface with the cassette mechanism through a signal conditioner to insure impedance matching. The cassette's outputs are directly connected to a "line out" for communication, and the internal speaker. The analog signal, whether originating from a tape or an external input, is again filtered and prepared for subsequent conversion to digital.

A CPU, in concert with the user controlled tape mechanism and keypad, controls the conversion process spooling the digital data for efficient storage within the RAM buffer. The CPU also allows for the personalizing of display size and font via the display controller, RAM buffer and character generator. The digital components provide the unit with direct digital I/O capability. The display controller offers the additional utility of receiving a composite video signal from an external source and thereby rendering the unit a remote video display terminal.

As discussed earlier, the application of a book, electronic or otherwise, is predominantly sequential. But despite this sequential predominance, the book must be able to "turn to page...". In order to enable the electronic book to quickly sequence within the tape, finding and displaying any particular chapter within any one of the potentially contained books, a sequential "file retrieval" system has been incorporated.

Essentially the analog data stream contains periodic "flags" which are correlated by the CPU and presented to the user for selection. These flags occur at a rate that provides a boundary for the spooling of RAM, and allows the system to advance to locations which appear to the user as chapter and page numbers. Once the RAM storage is filled, the system will automatically increment data display from either page number selection or the move page sensors. When a tape is first loaded the "leader" of the tape provides the CPU, via separately spooled storage, a table of equivalents between the books contained on the tape, their chapter and page numbers, and the tapes flag system.

As the tape, and its available mechanism, are designed for use in a dual track or stero fashion, the secondary track provides capacity of either; greater analog signal storage, separate graphic character storage, or in the case of "listen and view", an audio track.

In the early units, counter locations relating to the tape mechanism will be correlated to contents allowing the user to "fast forward" to the general location. Once within the desired book and chapter, the internal electronics will respond to the keypad for specific page access. A status line constantly presents the current location.

By controlling the character generator and display controller, the system allows the user to personalize the display size and character font. Elementary grade students, or visually impaired students can easily adjust the book to their own level of visual perception. Similarly, the tapes can contain an audio track for synchronous playback during display thus providing a pronunciation aid or a foreign language tutor.

As mentioned earlier, the display controller electronics resident in the CompuRead electronic book provide the economy and practicality for an indigenous video display.

In the commercial applications the addition of a tuner yields a portable television. In the more economy limited educational model this additional "video only" capacity provides a feature of great significance. Video information originating from video tape, video disc, or tuner selected public television can be easily distributed to the entire classroom over the same simple cable we outlined earlier for data communication. The Public Educational Television networks (PBS) could finally achieve the potential they have for so long been denied.

By connecting this video chain to the video output of a PC, a series of drawing and graphic programs can provide the basis for an electronic blackboard.

Throughout the course of this presentation we have covered a wide range of applications and grounded them securely in a overview of the incorporated technologies. In closing, we will reconsider some of our earlier statements in a broader context.

Along with the tutorial scenario outlined earlier, the interactive potential of the book has applications in many other areas. Obvious ones in business range from operational and service manuals to management tools and specialized employment qualification tests. A significant application would be the creation of a totally new dimension of reading for entertainment. Like some of the junior books today, or "Clue" the multi-ending movie, a novel can have many trees to especially satisfy various types of readers. A limited reader response would "unknowingly" send him along a different path.

Perhaps the greatest singular merit of the book is its ability to address the lack of education in so many parts of the world. For example, the desire of many to be educated despite not having the opportunity or resources to go to school, or to obtain the specialized training requirements for many of tomorrows job functions.

The merits of personal interaction are enhanced by the books ability to transmit and receive information over commercial lines (without a modem). Together these capacities will combine to produce an educated society only dreamed of by the conventional PC industry.

So far this presentation has dealt with applications that are limited by the current state of economic audio electronics. Once accepted and rendered economical by its growing volume, the book has the potential to create new and more economical analog recording medias. The concept we have presented is just as functional at a megahertz as it is at 10 kilohertz. Once practicality permits these higher frequency rates a 60 minute tape could store over a gigabyte. In short the books already substantial utility is just a beggining.

Commercially speaking, the addition of a few components to the basic unit, so far described, will yield the ultimate personal aid. A single device which is; an electronic book, a limited function personal computer, an audio listening device, a portable television, a calculator, and the personal communicator of the information age.

In closing, the utility and advantages of the book will become a great sales tool for computers. When equipped with a full keyboard, the book will function as a portable extension of a `base' computer.

We acknowledge again that much of the manipulative and processing capabilities of this product are directly related to the contemporary digital technologies. The issue we stress is that while many such functions can be performed on a computer, computers simply do not have the practicality or economy necessary for the data manipulation we as people need to do the most; READ! They are computers which allow for reading, we have presented a book which allows for computing and that is the significant difference.

DEDICATED APPLICATIONS

CompuRead offers the user unprecedented efficiency in the access to all reference material. The dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, and manuals are easily incorporated into a tape to RAM routine for rapid retrieval and display of the desired information. Keying the first three letters would load the RAM with all information so prefaced and pressing the up or down key would locate any specific information. An in-depth study of dedicated potential uses yields hundreds of applications that offer immediate justification for the book.

Medical - Patient data such as charts, personal and medical histories, and insurance information can be transferred from the central computer to the book for portable access.

Sales Managers - Will have access to product and individual territory and specific salesmen performance data. Customer information, sales strategies, and price lists will be sent directly to the salesman in the field. The book provides the salesman with immediate factory information,inventories, and shipping status with a single phone call.

Libraries - Calling the library for listings and then down-loading selected books will be common. The library will never be out of "best sellers" or hard to keep reference material and the reader will never have a due date to influence his reading pace. The library would become a true source of public information not just a place to achieve books and magazines. The visually impaired, usually limited to special books or apparatus, will be able to access all books and let the CompuRead book adjust the displayed text for their specific needs.

Clubs and Social Groups - Calendars, minutes of meetings, member lists, special events and social activities will be transmitted to local groups and members. The utility of the CompuRead book allows all sports, classified advertisements, specific training, suggestions, or just plain gossip, to be both current and inexpensive.

for all children

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