A research team from Maryland and Berkeley Universities in the United States have further realized the potential of Amazon’s wildly popular Kindle ebook reader in replacing traditional paper books, with the unveiling of a prototype dual-display ebook reader at the recent CHI08 conference in Florence, Italy.

Tackling the mechanical limitations of the single-screen Kindle, this dual-screen reader incorporates page-turning mechanisms, the ability to fold it back into a single-page version, and page separation for information sharing, bringing it even closer to the real thing, sans the tree-chopping.

Testers have so far given the prototype favorable reviews, save for its somewhat bulky weight, which may be rectified once it enters production stage. Check out the video demonstration below.

via Gizmodo / New Scientist