MICROSCOPIC WRITING

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 3190, 3 February 1928, Page 7

MICROSCOPIC WRITING

53,000,000 LETTERS TO SQUARE

INCH.

The member of the staff of the Ordnance Survey who has written the Lord's Prayer 11^ times in the space of a threepenny piece—equal to 2,086 words to the square inch—certainly has a fine achievement to his credit. But this is far from being the smallest writing ever achieved.

This record was set up by the late Mr William Webb, F.R.M.S., who invented a machine by which he wrote, with a diamond, a series of slides ranging from the equivalent of one complete Bible to the square inch to 59 Bibles to the square inch. The slides were readable under a microscope.

One specimen of his microscopic writing contained 227 words in the space of l-237,000th of a square inch, the ratio of letters to the square inch being 53,799,000! MACHINE DESTROYED. ... Shortly before his death Mr Webb destroyed the machine with which he accomplished these marvels of writing, but most of the slides he made are still in existence. Mention may be made, too, of Peter Bales, a Londoner, who, in the 16th century, without any mechanical nelp, wrote in the space of a penny piece the Lord's Prayer,- the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, two Latin prayers, his,name, the date, and Queen Elizabeth's name. He enclosed this in a gold ring, covered it with a crystal, and presented it to Queen Elizabeth. All the writing, it is said, was perfectly legible.