| The concept of the paperless e-book became a reality in the late 1990s with the marketing of several devices. These machines allow users to download texts from the Internet and read them on a portable, handheld display. The RCA REB1100 model e-book shown here is about the size of a paperback. It lasts 20 to 40 hours between battery charges, holds a minimum of 8,000 pages of text, and includes an internal modem for downloading books. |