How it began
Ángela Ruiz Robles was a teacher, writer and inventor working in Ferrol, in Galicia. She devised the Enciclopedia Mecánica, or Mechanical Encyclopedia, for her students in 1948 and patented it in 1949. The first patent described a mechanism with buttons which, when pressed, displayed learning materials. A second patent in 1962 covered a modified design without buttons, in which reels presented texts and illustrations to the reader.
Before it existed
Schoolchildren had to carry many heavy books to school, and printed encyclopedias were bulky and their content went out of date quickly. Ruiz Robles wanted a single light device that could replace that load, be kept current by swapping its contents, and make learning more accessible and inviting. Her design was meant to be adapted by educators to any subject and any language.
How it works
The device was analog and mechanical. Content was printed on reels, or coils, mounted on the left and right sides of a case; the reader wound them so that each topic passed by and stopped where wanted. The reels could be changed for other subjects. The 1962 design sat the reels beneath a transparent, unbreakable sheet, with a magnifying glass for enlarging the text, a light so that it could be read in the dark, and provision for spoken descriptions.
Who pushed back
The Mechanical Encyclopedia was never manufactured. Ruiz Robles made several trips to Madrid to seek funding but was unable to secure it. In 1970 she turned down a proposal to license her patents in the United States, because she wanted her inventions to be developed in Spain and to benefit people there. The device therefore remained a prototype.
Where it stands today
The prototype is kept at the National Museum of Science and Technology in A Coruña. Spain's ministries of education and of economy recognized her work in 2013, and in 2018 Madrid named a street after her. Jeremy Norman's History of Information lists the 1949 patent as a forerunner of the electronic book, and some accounts go further and call it the first electronic book, although it contained no electronics for storing text.
