Inaugural lecture of the Ángela Ruíz Robles Cycle

16 February, 2022

#Event February – May – July 2022

This year, the DaSCI institute is organizing a new series of conferences centered on the innovative teacher Ángela Ruíz Robles from Spain. The proposal for this cycle brings together three figures with great charisma. We open on February 22 with Paula de la Hoz. Computer engineer, communicator and security expert. Founder and President of Interferencias, an association for digital rights and privacy on the Internet. She currently works as Threat Intelligence at SentinelOne. Paula will talk about Open Hardware for Security. In May and July other online and open conferences will honor the figure of Ángela Ruíz Robles.

Doña Angelita

She was born in León in 1895 into a well-to-do family (her father was a pharmacist and her mother a housewife). From her beginnings as a teacher, she realized that education was lagging behind the technological advances of the time. For this reason, her great ingenuity was focused on innovation, on discovering more creative and visual learning methods for her students.

In 1949 he invented the “mechanical book“. In the patent (190698) it is described as a “mechanical, electrical and air pressure procedure for reading books”. A device for “intuitive, pleasant teaching and for quickly taking advantage of the moments when the attention can be fixed on a certain point”. Since 1952 he was working on the “Mechanical Encyclopedia“, more ambitious than the mechanical book. In this “encyclopedia” the contents of each subject are developed along strips of paper arranged in interchangeable rolls. These rolls moved behind a transparent screen with optical qualities. It included surfaces to make notes and erase what was written, alphabets to form syllables, words or small sentences, engraved sounds and from various compartments school drawing material and scientific instruments (clock, compass, thermometer, barometer).

Doña Angelita, the pioneer of the electronic book, passed away in 1975, paying punctually the fees for her invention that she was unable to develop and distribute. She never stopped teaching, never needed more than the desire to do so to commit to a project.