‘The World’s Smallest Book’ Gets A Print Edition

By Anthea Quay, 26 Sep 2012

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Back in 2007, Vancouver-based artist Robert Chaplin made the World’s Smallest Book, by using a focused ion beam to carve letters onto a microchip that’s thinner than a strand of hair.

The microchip has an array of 30 tablets, with each letter of the book carved with a line resolution of 43 nanometers (a nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter).

“The tablets contain the text of Teeny Ted From Turnip Town, complete with an ISBN. In 2012, I received a Guinness World Record confirming my creation of the smallest book yet made,” he said.

The microchip version of the book can’t be seen with the naked eye or with a microscope—it requires a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to be seen.

So now, Chaplin wants to release a large-print edition of his book ‘Teeny Ted From Turnip Town’—which won’t get lost on a bookshelf, and which readers can see without using an SEM.

Currently, he is seeking funding on Kickstarter.

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