A reading pacer machine is a mechanical or electronic device designed to guide the reader’s eye along lines of text at a controlled speed. Its purpose is usually to train reading fluency, concentration, or speed.

- Early versions (mid-20th century) were used in schools and speed-reading courses. They projected or displayed text with a moving window, bar, or light that “paced” the reader line by line.
-Some models gradually increased speed to push readers beyond subvocalization.
-Later electronic versions used scrolling screens or tachistoscopic flashes of words. They sit at the intersection of educational technology and experimental reading machines, often appearing in discussions of alternative reading practices alongside artists’ book experiments.

Reflection:  Possible further exploration needed of the mechanisms used in this reading machine particularly the scroll function. This forms a link between early and contemporary mechanised reading machines.

Everyday Science and Mechanics from April 1935, brought an interesting idea of the book of the future, as seen at that time. The prediction was that books and newspapers would be stored and read on microfilm. The stand was therefore designed to hold a screen which displayed photographs of book pages. The description of the machine said (via Smithsonian): It has proved possible to photograph books, and throw them on a screen for examination, as illustrated long ago in this magazine. At the left is a device for applying this for home use and instruction; it is practically automatic. The display was mounted on a large adjustable pole. The stand included also a book lamp, and a special control panel to turn pages and adjust focus. In the 1930s many people believed microfilm would be the future of publishing. The same year the New York Times started copying all of its editions onto microfilm.

https://ebookfriendly.com/book-machines-before-kindle/​

Reflection: This reader relates to Microfiche and Micro Pages project by Abigail Thomas. My publication Emitron was scanned in and converted to the microfiche format. Read more here

In 1930, an American avant-garde writer Bob Brown published a manifesto, entitled “The Readies,” where he called for a new reading machine that would allow him to continue reading quicker and more conveniently. A simple reading machine which I can carry or move around and attach to any old electric light plug and read a hundred thousand word novels in ten minutes if I want to, and I want to. A machine as handy as a portable phonograph, typewriter or radio, compact, minute operated by electricity, the printing done microscopically by the new photographic process on a transparent tough tissue roll. The machine answering Brown’s manifesto was constructed a few months later by Ross Saunders and Hilaire Hiler. It was revealed in May 1931 at the meeting of surrealist artists in Cagnes-sur-Mer, on the French Riviera.

The artists believed “the machine would be a part of a revolutionary transition to a liberated wor(l)d” (a quote from The Amazing Adventures of Bob Brown by Craig Saper). The device was constructed from a breadbox, and included a system of wires and spools to present special texts written and processed for it, called “readies.

Bookwheel, from Agostino Ramelli's Le diverse et artificiose machine, 1588

A bookwheel is a rotating reading device, first designed in the 16th century by Italian engineer Agostino Ramelli. It resembles a vertical Ferris wheel of lecterns or shelves, allowing multiple large books to be mounted at once. By turning a geared wheel, a reader could rotate between texts without lifting or repositioning heavy volumes. This mechanical aid anticipated modern notions of information management, enabling cross-referencing and comparative study with ease. Beyond practicality, the bookwheel symbolized Renaissance ideals of engineering, knowledge, and invention. Today, it is often revisited by artists and historians as a metaphor for multitasking and reading technologies.

Robert Fisk’s Reading Machine was an experimental device created in the 1930s to improve reading speed and efficiency. Designed for education and accessibility, it presented text one word or phrase at a time through a mechanical display, training the eye to focus and reducing the back-and-forth scanning typical of traditional reading. Fisk’s invention embodied modernist ideals of progress, mechanisation, and the streamlining of human cognition. While never widely adopted, it influenced later discussions around speed-reading, ergonomics, and the relationship between technology and literacy. The Reading Machine stands as both a curiosity and a precursor to digital text-display systems.

Images from: www.engadget.com/2018-07-06-backlog-fiske-reading-machine.html