Robert fisk / READING MACHINE

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