140 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 



Dumoulin-Froment, within a circle less than three one- 

 hundredths of an inch in diameter,'' " in which are embraced 

 four human figures and various other objects, together with 

 inscriptions in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, all clearly legible. 

 In this device the rising sun is represented in the horizon, 

 the diameter of the disk being about three one-thousandths 

 of an inch. This disk has been cross-hatched by the 

 draughtsman in the original design from which the copy 

 was made ; and the copy shows the marks of the cross- 

 hatching with perfect distinctness. When this beautiful 

 and delicate drawing is brought clearly out by a suitably 

 adjusted illumination, the lines appear as if traced by a 

 smooth point in a surface of opaque ice/' 



Lardner, in his book on the " Microscope," published in 

 1856, gives a wood cut which shows the first piece of en- 

 graving magnified 1 20 diameters, but he said that he was 

 not at liberty to describe the method by which it was 

 done. As happens in almost all such cases, however, the 

 very secrecy with which the process was surrounded natu- 

 rally stimulated others to rival or surpass it, and Mr. N. 

 Peters, a London banker, turned his attention to the subject 

 and soon invented a machine which produced results far 

 exceeding anything that M. Froment had accomplished. 

 On April 25, 1855, Mr. Farrants read before the Microsco- 

 pical Society^of London a full account of the Peters machine, 

 with which the inventor had written the Lord's Prayer (in 

 the ordinary writing character, without abbreviation or 

 contraction of any kind), in a space not exceeding the one 

 hundred and fifty-thousandth of a square inch. Seven 

 years later, Mr. Farrants, as President of the Microscopical 

 Society, described further improvements in the machine of 

 Mr. Peters, and made the following statement : " The 



