Microscopic Bible

Nowadays, spies can smuggle and transmit millions of pages of secret documents electronically, and physically on micro-sized chips. But in the good old days of spying during the “Cold War,” they used things like microscopic sized photographs on microfilm.

Through that old spy technology, some folks reduced the entire Bible down to the size of a postage stamp, and I was fortunate enough to get a rare copy, which I immediately put under the microscope.

Here is a complete King James Version of the Holy Bible. It includes both Old and New Testaments. It contains 1245 pages (773,746 words) printed on a 1″ x 1 1/2″ plastic slide. The text itself takes up a mere 1″ x 1 1/8″. The size of a postage stamp, you only need a low power microscope to see every individual page.

In the above photo, what looks to your eye like individual pages are actually sets of four pages. This reduction is 63,000 to 1 from original image size. Regular microfilm usually only provides a reduction of about 500 to 1. This image is produced on specially formulated microfilm (rated with a 500 year life expectancy) sandwiched between two super thin, super strong, sheets of clear mylar. The image will not fade or rub off.

Here is a Bible you can carry in your wallet, or send to a friend in one of the countries that do not allow Bibles, where possession is a criminal offense.

In fact, 300 of these microfilm Bibles were smuggled aboard the 1971 Apollo 14 Mission spacecraft as a favor to a reverend, Brought back to earth and one copy has been auctioned for $56,250. Guess what? 100 of these were left on the moon, and 200 returned to earth. I’m keeping mine safe! Read the full story here.

The above photos shown here were taken through my microscope at magnifications of 40x and 100x. At 40 x you can see individual pages. Amazing enough, but you can see that at 100X or better, on an average microscope, you can clearly read the text.