Fascinating to see someone's iteration of an e-reader of the future: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/2012/03/the-ipad-of-1935
I always find it interesting to see these old images of "the future" as imagined at an earlier time. Often, there are uncanny similarities between what was imagined and what does end up happening -- yet obvious gaps in knowledge of what would be possible in the future. In this case, the artist/engineer could foresee the use of "miniaturized text," because it was already being used in microfilm. So basically, existing technology was just re-packaged in an armchair to invent a "reader." So really, the contraption shown was not all that innovative. What people could not have imagined (or did not imagine... until, of course, it was imagined) was invention of the computer chip and, subsequently, the Internet.
Looking at these old designs, aside from eliciting a chuckle, can remind us that we should not let what we know limit what we can imagine.
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