It's not elegant and it's not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.


Which makes for all sorts of interesting if you can get your own book out from, say a USB memory stick, and into the real world. I may have to have a wander down there and see it in action myself one day.
I see this as a precursor of all things 3D printer-y.