What is "microprinting"

n. 1 microprint. 2 The generation of microprint.

Microprinting is the production of recognizable patterns or characters on a printed medium at a scale which requires magnification to be read. To the unaided eye, the text may appear as a solid line. Attempts to reproduce by methods of photocopy, image scanning, or pantograph will be translated as a dotted or solid line to the reproduction machine which cannot identify and recreate patterns to such scale. Microprint is predominantly used as an anti-counterfeiting technique due to its inability to be easily reproduced by digital methods.

Microprinting is employed as an anti-counterfeiting feature under the assumption that it would be exceptionally difficult for an individual to reproduce accurately without access to resources which are not readily available to the general public.

While microphotography precedes microprint, microprint was significantly influenced by Albert Boni in 1934 when he was inspired by his friend, writer and editor Manuel Komroff who was showing his experimentations related to the enlarging of photographs. It occurred to Albert that if he could reduce rather than enlarge photographs this technology may enable publication companies and libraries to access much greater quantities of data at a minimum cost of material and storage space. Over the following decade, Boni worked to develop microprint, a micro-opaque process in which pages were photographed using 35mm microfilm and printed on cards using offset lithography. This process proved to produce a 6" by 9" index card which stored 100 pages of text from the normal sized publications he was reproducing. Boni began the Readex Microprint company to produce and license this technology. He also published an article A Guide to the Literature of Photography and Related Subjects (1943) which appeared in a supplemental 18th issue of the Photo-Lab Index.