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Espresso Book Machine

There is one at The Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, that prints books in Arabic; one at the Internet Archive in San Francisco, and one launched yesterday in London's Blackwell's bookstore.

Guardian (Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London):

It's not elegant and it's not sexy - it looks like a large photocopier - but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

...It cost Blackwell some $175,000, but the bookseller believes it will make this back in a year.

The inventors' firm, OnDemandBooks, suggests anything could be printed. Such as one copy of your book, just to see what it looks like.

(I'd love to see a fleet of inexpensive printers at lunch counters for custom newspapers. But that's another machine.)

Espresso book machine delivers your paperback hot off the press - Times Online. The Times went to Blackwell's to try out the new gizmo:

Instead of checking in vain on Amazon and then spending weeks trawling the nation's second-hand bookshops, you will be able to go into a shop, say, "I would like a copy of North American Starfishes by Alexander Agassiz, please," and then watch it being printed out in a twinkling.

Apt comment:

"after 13 minutes - rather slow," ..to get a book out-of.print for 50 years?!!

Oh come on! Since when do you get to complain about the slowness of something that last week didn't exist?

Donal, Madrid, Spain

History:

June 2007, Engadget, New York Public Library gets first Espresso Book Machine

September 2006, Metafilter, The Espresso Book Machine

 Tags  books custom

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