Scientists read 300-year-old letters without opening them
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Unopened letters more than 300 years old that were folded using mysterious techniques have now been read for the first time without opening them, a new study finds.
For centuries, before mass-produced envelopes started proliferating in the 1830s, most letters across the globe were sent using letterlocking, a method of folding letters to become their own envelopes. These intricate techniques also often served to help recipients detect if mail had been tampered with.
For example, during research in the Vatican Secret Archives, conservator Jana Dambrogio at the MIT Libraries unearthed Renaissance letters with odd slits and sliced-off corners. She discovered these were signs these documents were originally locked with a slice of paper slid through a slit and closed with a wax seal. Such letters could not be opened without ripping the paper,
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A signed, sealed but not delivered letter from 1697 has finally been read with the help of a high-tech scan that looked inside without breaking its seal.
New Technique Reveals Centuries of Secrets in Locked Letters
M.I.T. researchers have devised a virtual-reality technique that lets them read old letters that were mailed not in envelopes but in the writing paper itself after being folded into elaborate enclosures.
The computer-generated unfolding sequence of a sealed letter.Credit.Unlocking History Research Group
Published March 2, 2021Updated March 4, 2021
In 1587, hours before her beheading, Mary, Queen of Scots, sent a letter to her brother-in-law Henry III, King of France. But she didn’t just sign it and send it off. She folded the paper repeatedly, cut out a piece of the page and left it dangling. She used that strand of paper to sew the letter tight with locking stitches.