Last week there was some buzzing about physics-defying printing technology and all anyone could say was that the picture looked like it was made on a TI-83 or MS paint. At 100,000 Dots-Per-Inch they managed to print a 50x50 micrometer image...to give you a sense of scale, you could fit every picture that you've ever taken (even the blurry ones you keep on your hard drive for some reason) on a single playing card.
To accomplish this they have extremely tiny print nozzles with a pitch of 250nm...Each pixel is so small that the image wouldn't be visible to the human eye without some scientific hustling. To remedy this they had to methodically assemble tiny chrome colored pillars of insulation at various heights and widths to control the color of light reflected...kind of like nano-scale version of Tetris. Sounds like a lot of work.
Besides the resounding "That looks like crap." from the internet, those in the know are happy to point out that this peculiar image has a tendency to pop up in print demos. So who is this mysterious inkjet Mona Lisa? The 512x512 image became infamously known as "Lenna" and was first used way back in 1973 as a test image for some ancient drum scanner. Tired of the bland images that they had used in previous demonstrations, they opted for something glossy and...human.
It seems like the only thing they had on hand was an old copy of 1972 issue of Playboy featuring a Swedish model named Lena Söderberg. For years this image would be used in image processing experiments and Lena would become the unknowing "First Lady of the Internet". Some claim the popularity of the image is due to it's wide dynamic range in color, shading, and texture...but a less bull!@#$ answer: Boys will be boys.
It's a flattering image to say the least, but some think it's sexist to use a pin-up for educational purposes. Playboy themselves were surprisingly leinient in the use of the image. Instead of suing the hell out of them for reproducing the image over and over again, they helped track down the former model to make an appearance at the 50th annual Conference of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology.
So they printed a really, really small picture that almost escapes the human eye's visible spectrum, but what practical use does this serve? They're saying that this could be useful for storing massive amounts of data on some sort of physical media, as well as creating incredibly small watermarks that will give any counterfeiter a hell of a hard time. This might prove useful if you happen to shrink yourself in a bizarre electromagnetic-shrinkray mishap. It's a small world after all.