Smallest book reproduction: SFU lab breaks Guinness world record (VIDEO)
Vancouver, B.C., Canada -- Simon Fraser University's (SFU) Nano Imaging lab produced a copy of Teeny Ted from Turnip Town that measures 0.07 X 0.10 millimetres in size; the author of the book is Malcolm Douglas Chaplin and it was published by Robert Chaplin, setting the new world record for the Smallest book reproduction,
according to the World Record Academy: www.worldrecordacademy.com/. Photo: SFU's Nano Imaging lab produced a copy of Teeny Ted from Turnip Town that measures 0.07 X 0.10 millimetres in size. Photo: SFU Public Affairs (enlarge photo)
The Guinness world record for the smallest ever printed book measures 0.9 x 0.9 mm and is an edition of 'Chameleon' by the Russian author Anton Chekhov. The book was made and published by Anatoliy Konenko, of Omsk, Siberia, Russia in 1996. Each book consists of 30 pages, has three colour illustrations and 11 lines of text to a page.
Guinness World Records also recognized the world record for the most people balancing books on their heads; it was achieved by 939 participants in silver city, Philippines.
Publisher Robert Chaplin, who had some help from SFU lab managers, used a focused gallium ion beam to imprint the book on a polished piece of single crystalline silicon.
" In 2007 I was permitted access to a focused ion beam and scanning electron microscope at Simon Fraser University. In my time working with this equipment I designed and published an original work on a microchip, as an array of 30 tablets. The tablets contain the text of 'Teeny Ted From Turnip Town' complete with an ISBN."
If you want to read the book, you'll need to use a scanning electron microscope.
''Teeny Ted From Turnip Town '
Teeny Ted a wild rhyme by Malcolm Douglas Chaplin. It tells the tale of Teeny Ted and his triumph at the turnip contest at the annual county fair.
"The typography of the tablets looks like ancient cuneiform because I used the ion beam to carve the space surrounding each letter. Here are some sample tablets carved with a line resolution of 42 nanometers. A nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter."
