Royalty, Espionage, and Erotica: Secrets of the World's Tiniest Photographs
Mary finished her embroidery, tucking her needle away into its handsome ivory case. Before slipping the case into her sewing kit, Mary held it up to the light of a nearby window, and peered into a tiny glass lens embedded in the ivory. She smiled at the secret photograph of her favorite place—London’s Crystal Palace. In the next room, her husband, John, checked the time on his pocket watch. Making sure Mary was out of sight, John lifted the watch chain to his eye, stealing a peek at a tiny photo of a topless woman deftly hidden inside his watch key.
In the mid-19th century, a few decades after the invention of photography, inventors began experimenting with minuscule “microphotographs” developed on glass slides, producing images that were all but invisible without a standard microscope. But the diminutive Stanhope lens changed that—concealed behind a magnifying glass no larger than the head of a pin, microphotographs could now be viewed with the naked eye.
Suddenly, it was all the rage to insert tiny photos into everyday objects; needle cases and watch keys (such as those in the fictional scenario above) were just two kinds of objects among thousands containing Stanhope lenses. Such novelties spread across the globe, with millions of them made over the next century. Microphotographs would even play a significant role in wartime espionage, allowing people to sneak messages over enemy lines. But today, these ingenious Stanhope devices are mostly forgotten, along with the scientific contributions of their imaginative inventors.
