Fiske’s Reading Machine was a handheld e-reader invented by retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske in the early 1920s.

Books were photographically reduced into extremely tiny print on narrow cards, which users inserted into the metal device and read through a magnifying eyepiece while a shield covered the other eye.

The cards could hold large amounts of text in very little space, so Fiske imagined people carrying whole libraries in a pocket or purse. A futuristic dream!

The machine received a U.S. patent in 1923, but it never became commercially successful.

Often described as an early mechanical ancestor of devices such as the Kindle.