The ScanRobot 2.0 uses gentle puffs of air to turn a book's pages. Credit: Treventus Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. For decades, preservationists charged with digitizing rare books have faced an ironic challenge. The whole point of scanning these often one-of-a-kind objects is to keep the delicate manuscripts from harm. To do that, however, required a much more hands-on approach. One of the first solutions was to simply pla...