World's smallest published book.

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It's a big feat of the tiniest proportions. Simon Fraser University (SFU)'s Nano Imaging Lab has produced the world's smallest published book. The only catch--you'll need a scanning electron microscope to read it.

At 0.07 millimetres x 0.10 millimetres, Teeny Ted from Turnip Town is a tinier read than any other cited by the Guinness Book of World Records. By way of comparison, the head of a pin is about 2 millimetres.

The production of the nanoscale book was carried out at SFU by publisher Robert Chaplin, with the help of SFU scientists Li Yang and Karen Kavanagh. The work involved using a focused-gallium-ion beam and one of a number of electron microscopes available in SFU's nano imaging facility. A nanometre is about ten atoms in size. With a minimum diameter of seven nanometres, the beam was programmed to carve the space surrounding each letter of the book.

The book is made up of 30 microtablets, each carved on a polished piece of single crystalline silicon, and has its own International Standard Book Number (ISBN 978-1-894897-17-4).

The story, written by the publisher's brother Malcolm Douglas Chaplin, is a fable about Teeny Ted's victory in the turnip contest at the annual county fair. Considered an intricate work of contemporary art, 100 copies of the book are available in a signature edition from the publisher through the SFU lab.

Simon Fraser University