Like most other things, a book is the result of thousands of years of human invention.

First, the invention of writing came out from about 5500 years ago. With writing, people did not have to remember everything in their heads. They could communicate with people that they never saw and share their knowledge with future people.

Later, the Greeks (希腊人) were well-known for their literature and science, but their “books” looked very different from the books of today. They were called scrolls (卷轴). They were difficult to use. About 2000 years ago, books with lots of pages were invented.

For more than a thousand years, the page of books were made from animals’ skin (皮肤). That changed in the thirteenth century, when Europeans learned about a very useful Chinese invention—paper.

But the big change for book in Europe came in 1439, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press (印刷机). Before that, books in Europe were copied by hand, so they were very expensive.

These days, it is difficult to imagine a word without books. But human invention does not stop. Every year, more stories are brought as a e-books, and reading them on screen, becoming more and more popular.

Here are some clever robots from different countries.

Partner	It is from Japan. About 40% of the robots in the world are made in Japan. It can play the violin and it can also do the housework.
Nao	It is from France. It can talk with people in French, English and Chinese. It can also dance and play Tai Chi. Its price is about $12,600. It will probably become cheaper. Maybe it will become your friend in the near future.
AIC-CI	It is from China. It is good at cooking. It can make many kinds of Chinese dishes. It can finish a dish in five minutes. It may come to your home in twenty years.
Miguelin	It is from Spain. It is a lovely robot. It is 6.5 meters tall. It can blink(眨眼), giggle(咯咯地笑) and turn its head from side to side.

Imagine you walk into your office, with the temperature just right. You sit down and begin what will be a very productive (富有成效的) dау. Тhіѕ іѕ thе kіnd of smart office that engineers are trying to make. It uses technology to help workers perform at their best while at work.

Sitting in front of a desk for too long can be bad for your health. For example, it can cause back and waist (胸) pain. Sanon, a company (公司) in Zhejiang, built UP7 to help address this. As a smart lifting desk, UP7 can tell how long a user has been sitting in the chair. When it reaches the time set by the user, it will “tell” the user to stand up and walk around. It does this by either vibrating (震动) the table or sending messages to the user’s phone.

The company also designed a type of smart chair to match with the table. “The chair is so comfortable. It can adjust (调整) the arms and height according to your body shape,” a user in Zhejiang posted on Xiaohongshu. In smart offices, you probably won’t use paper notebooks. Instead, you can try electronic (电子的) paper books to put every work document (文件) online. N10, created by Hanvon Technology in Bejing, is a new “notebook” like this. It uses a screen that doesn’t produce much light. Users write with an electronic pen, and they can pick from options (选项) like a pen, a pencil, an ink brush and many more.

“It truly feels like reading and writing on real paper, completely meeting my office needs,” a user surnamed (姓) Lin said to People’s Daily. “Notes recorded can be easily organized, searched and stored. You usually need several paper notebooks to do what the electronic notebook does.”