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| Source: Molecular Machines Gallery |
Scientists using a novel printing method have managed to make a color image whose resolution approaches the maximum theoretical limit. The Singapore team published their work in Nature Nanotechnology earlier this week.
Wired breaks down the science pretty well: the team created pixels using “nanoscale posts, with silver and gold nanodiscs on top.” How far apart these posts are, as well as their diameter, determines what color light they reflect. The pillars are all of a nanometer tall. The image’s resolution, in the end, is 100,000 DPI (dots per inch).
The last curious element of this story is the image the scientists chose to reproduce: an image of Lena Soderberg, a Swedish model who posed in 1972 for Playboy. This image (from the neck up, mind you) is actually canonical in computer imaging circles. It all started in 1973, when an imaging scientist at USC was looking for good image to scan for a conference paper. Reported Jamie Hutchinson in 2001: “They had tired of their stock of usual test images, dull stuff dating back to television standards work in the early 1960s. They wanted something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy.”
From that point on, use of the Lena picture in imaging circles grew, until it simply became standard.
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Technology Review: A Playboy Model and Nanoscale Printing
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