Data Handling: Micro-Bible

At first glance, the tiny exhibit at the National Cash Register Co.'s pavilion at the New York World's Fair seems singularly insignificant. But the sheet of transparent plastic, less than 2 in. square, is covered closely with 1,240 barely visible rectangles. And when examined with a microscope, each tiny rectangle spreads out into a page of the Bible. Both the Old and New Testament — all 773,746 words of the King James Version — are all clearly recorded on that one slip of plastic. The job took only four hours.

The Bible was reproduced by what Bob Chollar, the company's...

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