Franklin Electronic Publishers Introduce the Franklin Digital Book System

In 1993 Franklin Electronic Publishers, Burlington, NJ,  introduced the Franklin Digital Book System (DBS-1). It was a small (5x3.25x0.5"), light (4 ounces), device with QWERTY keyboard and monochrome screen (40x160 resolution), using a 65C816 processor with 32 KB RAM. 

The digital books were on small ROM cards weighing less than half an ounce, eaching hold up to 45 MB of data; a player could read two at a time. The player came packaged with the Merriam Webster Dictionary and Word Games. Additional titles included a variety of dictionaries, medical reference books, and guides to baseball, nutrition, cooking, and so on. 

Though the Digital Book System package cost what was considered a reasonable $199, additional books were expensive at $50-130. In addition, the tiny five-line display made leisure reading impossible. Nevertheless the company claimed that they sold over 4 million of these.

The DBS-2 system illustrated here was introduced in 1994.