This robot scans rare library books at 2,500 pages per hour

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. For decades, preservationists charged with digitizing rare books have faced an ironic challenge. The whole point of scanning these often one-of-a-kind objects is to keep the delicate manuscripts from harm. To do that, however, required a much more hands-on approach. One of the first solutions was to simply place a tome in a book cradle, then photograph each individual page. In later years, archivists increasingly relied on more advanced top-down document camera arrays.