Later e-readers never followed a model at all like Brown's.Nevertheless, Brown predicted the miniaturization and portability of e-readers."Although fiction and non-fiction books come in e-book formats, technical material is especially suited for e-book delivery because it can be [electronically] searched" for keywords.
After Hart first adapted the Declaration of Independence into an electronic document in 1971, Project Gutenberg was launched to create electronic copies of more texts - especially books.
Another early e-book implementation was the desktop prototype for a proposed notebook computer, the Dynabook, in the 1970s at PARC: a general-purpose portable personal computer capable of displaying books for reading.
Her idea was to create a device which would decrease the number of books that her pupils carried to school.
The final device would include audio recordings, a magnifying glass, a calculator and an electric light for night reading.
Brown's faculty made extensive use of FRESS; for example the philosopher Roderick Chisholm used it to produce several of his books.
Thus in the Preface to Person and Object (1979) he writes "The book would not have been completed without the epoch-making File Retrieval and Editing System..." In 1971, the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the University of Illinois gave Hart extensive computer-time.
He titled it The Readies, playing off the idea of the "talkie".
Brown's notion, however, was much more focused on reforming orthography and vocabulary, than on medium (“It is time to pull out the stopper” and begin “a bloody revolution of the word.”): introducing huge numbers of portmanteau symbols to replace normal words, and punctuation to simulate action or movement; so it is not clear whether this fits in the history of "e-books" or not.
All these systems also provided extensive hyperlinking, graphics, and other capabilities.