Teeny Ted from Turnip Town (2007), published by Robert Chaplin, is certified by Guinness World Records as the world's smallest reproduction of a printed book.[1] The book was produced in the Nano Imaging Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with the assistance of SFU scientists Li Yang and Karen Kavanagh.[2]
The book's size is 0.07 mm x 0.10 mm. The letters are carved into 30 microtablets on a polished piece of single crystalline silicon, using a focused-gallium-ion beam with a minimum diameter of 7 nanometers (this was compared to the head of a pin at 2 mm, 2,000,000 nm, across). The book has its own ISBN, 978-1-894897-17-4.[2]
The story was written by Malcolm Douglas Chaplin and is "a fable about Teeny Ted's victory in the turnip contest at the annual county fair."[2]
The book has been published in a limited edition of 100 copies by the laboratory and requires a scanning electron microscope to read the text.
In December 2012, a Library Edition of the book was published with a full title of Teeny Ted from Turnip Town & the Tale of Scale: A Scientific Book of Word Puzzles and an ISBN 978-1-894897-36-5. On the title page it is referred to as the "Large Print Edition of the World's Smallest Book". The book was published using funds from a successful Kickstarter campaign with contributors' names shown on the dust jacket.[3]
See also[edit]
- Nanotechnology
- Limited edition books
- List of nanotechnology applications
- A Boy and His Atom, a stop-motion film created in a microscopic (molecular) scale
References[edit]
- ^ "Smallest reproduction of a printed book". Guinness World Records. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
- ^ a b c "Nano lab produces world’s smallest book". Simon Fraser University. 11 April 2007. Retrieved 31 January 2013.
- ^ "The World's Smallest Book - a large print edition". Kickstarter. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
External links[edit]
- "Tale of Teeny Ted said to be world's smallest book". Reuters. April 11, 2007.