Small Wonder

In the Middle Ages scholars wondered how many angels would fit on the head of a pin. This puzzle was never satisfactorily answered. But as the result of a recent technological advance at Stanford University we now know that the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica would comfortably fit there.

In 1960 Richard Feynman, the Caltech physicist, offered a $1,000 prize to anyone who could make a printed page 25,000 times smaller while still allowing it to be read. A Stanford graduate student, Tom Newman, has now done it, and Feynman has paid him the grand.

Newman’s technique is based on the same technology that is used to imprint electronic circuits on those tiny computer chips that are everywhere. Newman uses several electron beams to trace letters made up of dots that are 60 atoms wide. The resulting text can be read with an electron microscope.

Some technological advances bring instant rewards to humanity, while some have no practical use--at least for the moment. They are just amazing. In the latter category, chalk one up for Tom Newman, with an assist from Richard Feynman.