Want to scan books? Perhaps a lot of books? You could always purchase a scanner that automatically turns the pages for you except those scanners typically cost $100,000 and up. Way up. One model costs more than $400,000. Now an engineer at Google has built his own automated book scanner for about $1,500 plus spare parts from a vacuum cleaner.
Best of all, Google Books engineer Dany Qumsiyeh has donated the plans to the public domain, meaning you or anyone else is free to experiment, improve upon, and even sell scanners built on Qumsiyeh’s design, all without worrying about Google’s army of lawyers swooping down on you.
Best of all, Google Books engineer Dany Qumsiyeh has donated the plans to the public domain, meaning you or anyone else is free to experiment, improve upon, and even sell scanners built on Qumsiyeh’s design, all without worrying about Google’s army of lawyers swooping down on you.
You can read more in an article by Jeff Blagdon in The Verge at http://goo.gl/1IKac or watch the video below.
My thanks to newsletter reader Don Michel for telling me about this story.
