A Masterpiece

In the late 1800’s, convicted forger A. Schiller was serving his time in prison.  One night, the guards found him dead on the floor of his cell.  On his body, the guards found seven regular straight pins.  The heads of the pins measured the typical 47/1000ths of an inch or 1.17 millimeters in diameter.  Under 500X magnification, it was found the tiny etchings seen on the heads of the pints were the words to The Lord’s Prayer, which contains 65 words and 254 letters long.  Of the seven pints, six were silver and one was gold.  The prayer on the gold pin (pictured above) was flawless and a true masterpiece.  Schiller had spent the last 25 years of his life creating the pins, using a tool too small to be seen by the naked eye.  It is estimated that it took 1,863 separate carving strokes to make it.  Schiller went blind because of his artwork. 

Real or fake?  That’s for you to decide.