But they have no frame of reference for the time, so they style things from the time they are in. Really, why create this huge thing when a book is so much cheaper and convenient? Though in the right track, the designer just didn't see the future of computers and electronics.

We didn't get the transistor until we reverse engineered the alien technology recovered from the Roswell crash in 1947.

I remember reading EE Doc Smith stories as a kid and even then he saw the future of electronics as really, really complex tubes.

But it's nice to know they were thinking about such things back then.

which was the real forerunner of the ereader.

The giveaway is the "miniature film"

films are (for the times) extremely compact. An entire book in an envelope or an 8mm film canister.

And then tapes, spinning disks and silicon memory and beyond.