On: Google Books team open sources a book scanner

[Someone]

I think the use of air pressure to pick up individual sheets of paper goes back to card readers (as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card_reader). See for example http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/documation/M300_TechM... (page 9):

"The riffle air acts on the first half inch of cards in the input hopper so that they stand apart [...] This prevents the cards from sticking together"

"The picker mechanism utilizes a strong vacuum to grasp the bottom card"

So, this might seem creative, but programmers over the age of 50 or so will find it old-fashioned :-)

Also 45% chance of a page with a teared page to me sounds much and much better than 100% of chance of having the back completely cut away from your book.

[jimktrains2 → Someone]

It was also 45% chance that a book would end up with a tear, not a 45% chance per page.