In a series of lectures in 1999 at the New York Public Library, Jason Epstein outlined his vision of the next generation of pod technology: a fully automatic, low cost device that could be placed in a neighborhood bookshop, coffee shop, newsstand, library, hotel, even aboard a cruise ship or in airports. Unknown to Mr. Epstein, a prototype of the machine he envisioned actually existed in the St. Louis workshop of its inventor, Jeff Marsh. Mr. Marsh remains actively involved with ODB in research, development and design.

In 2003 Mr. Epstein and his partner Dane Neller founded ODB to develop Marsh’s machine and integrate it with the digital world.

The first experimental beta machine was installed at the World Bank InfoShop in Washington, D.C. in April 2006 where it printed thousands of World Bank publications. In September 2006 ODB installed a second beta machine at The Library of Alexandria, Egypt, to print books in Arabic.  The first 1.5 version EBM was introduced for ninety days at the New York Public Library during the summer of 2007 and since then additional EBMs have been installed in multiple global locations. These machines have now printed thousands of books and ODB will soon release the first commercial version of the Espresso Book Machine.