What looked to be a frightening rout was transformed suddenly and without the slightest advance warning into a huge rally as hundreds upon hundreds of gigantic buy orders, all 1 million shares or more in size, poured into electronic trading systems at Credit Suisse and several other major trading firms.
Some 500 people have been given electronic-book readers, a gadget the size of a paperback with a screen like that of a laptop computer and a slot to take a memory card that can store three or four novels.
Dr Sheridon has come up with a so-called wand an electronic stick that can hold ten full-size books and also transfer text on to a sheet of Gyricon if a user runs the wand over the surface like a handheld scanner.