NOVEL INVENTION

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4873, 21 July 1936, Page 8

NOVEL INVENTION

SHAKESPEARE IN A MATCHBOX. More than a million books will be kept in a room of ordinary size as the result of a process devised at Moscow by Professor J. P. Tikhonov, who is attached to the Academy of Sciences and is in charge of the laboratory for the restoration and preservation of manuscripts. With the new device all the collected works, for example, of Sir Walter Scott and Shakespeare would require no more space than an ordinary matchbox. The process calls for the photograph of a printed page so greatly reduced in size, it is claimed, that an ordinary newspaper page is no larger than a third of a square inch. The photograph is then transferred to a thin platinum film, which is fixed between two plates of glass. The projector throws the tiny “page” on to a greatly enlarged screen when it is to be consulted. According to Professor Tikhonov, this method has the. advantage of cheapness and permanence. The amount, of platinum necessary is so small as to be of negligible importance. The glass is impervious to damp, mould, decay, and changes of temperature. The documents can be preserved indefinitely, and no special filing rooms, with elaborate equipment, are necessary.