MICROGRAPHY OR MINUTE WRITING AND 

 MICROPHOTOGRAPHY 



[NUTE works of art have always excited the 

 curiosity and commanded the admiration of the 

 average man. Consequently Cicero thought it 

 worth while to record that the entire Illiad of 

 Homer had been written upon parchment in characters so 

 fine that the copy could be enclosed in a nutshell. This 

 has always been regarded as a marvelous feat. 



There is in the French Cabinet of Medals a seal, said to 

 have belonged to Michael Angelo, the fabrication of which 

 must date from a very remote epoch, and upon which fifteen 

 figures have been engraved in a circular space of fourteen 

 millimeters (.55 inch) in diameter. These figures cannot 

 be distinguished by the naked eye. 



The Ten Commandments have been engraved in charac- 

 ters so fine that they could be stamped upon one side of a 

 nickle five-cent piece, and on several occasions the Lord's 

 Prayer has been engraved on one side of a gold dollar, the 

 diameter of which is six-tenths of an inch. I have also 

 seen it written with a pen within a circle which measured 

 four-tenths of an inch in diameter. 



In the Harleian manuscript, 530, there is an account of a 

 "rare piece of work, brought to pass by Peter Bales, an 

 Englishman, and a clerk of the chancery." Disraeli tells 

 us that it was " The whole Bible in an English walnut, no 

 bigger than a hen's egg. The nut holdeth the book : there 

 are as many leaves in his little book as in the great Bible, 



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