For some time it has been recognized that important improvements can be achieved in the accuracy, sample size and counting time of radiocarbon dating by counting directly the number of radioactive atoms that are present in a sample rather than waiting for their decay and measuring the resulant radiation. A new technique to detect ¹⁴C directly from milligram samples has been developed by a joint effort of the University of Toronto (Canada), the University of Rochester (USA) and General Ionex Corp. (USA), using the 10 MV Tandem Accelerator at the University of Rochester. The feasibility of the new method was demonstrated by measuring the ¹⁴C to ¹²C ratio of four samples whose ages varied from 220 to 39, 500 years. The sample sizes used were 3.5 to 15 milligrams, which is approximately 1000 times smaller than the sample sizes required by the conventional method. Only a small fraction of this amount was depleted during the counting period.