An array of lights and optical instruments were used – including four cameras, two directed at each half of the book, and a range-finding LIDAR that overlaid a three-dimensional laser grid on the book’s surface to capture the curvature of the paper.A human operator would turn the pages by hand and operate the cameras through a foot pedal.
Registered users logged in with their Google accounts can post reviews for books on this page.
Google co-founder Larry Page had always had an interest in digitizing books.
When he and Marissa Mayer began experimenting with book scanning in 2002, it took 40 minutes for them to digitize a 300-page book.
Each book on Google Books has an associated "About this book" page which displays analytical information regarding the book such as a word map of the most used words and phrases, a selection of pages, list of related books, list of scholarly articles and other books that cite the book, and tables of content.
In some cases, a book summary and information about the author is also displayed.
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