Scientists read 300-year-old letters without opening them
• 7 min read
Catch up on the developing stories making headlines.STOCK/Getty Images
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,
Deep Science: AI adventures in arts and letters
There’s more AI news out there than anyone can possibly keep up with. But you can stay tolerably up to date on the most interesting developments with this column, which collects AI and machine learning advancements from around the world and explains why they might be important to tech, startups or civilization.
To begin on a lighthearted note: The ways researchers find to apply machine learning to the arts are always interesting though not always practical. A team from the University of Washington wanted to see if a computer vision system could learn to tell what is being played on a piano just from an overhead view of the keys and the player’s hands.
Updated:
The team used a technique called X-ray microtomography
Share Article
AAA
Computer-generated unfolding sequence of sealed letter DB-1538. Courtesy of the Unlocking History Research Group archive. The letters are from the Brienne Collection, Sound and Vision The Hague, The Netherlands.
The team used a technique called X-ray microtomography
(Subscribe to Science For All, our weekly newsletter, where we aim to take the jargon out of science and put the fun in. Click here.)
In 1926, a seventeenth-century trunk containing over 2000 unclaimed letters was bequeathed to the Dutch postal museum. The letters were closed using an ancient technique called letterlocking, in which the writing paper is intricately folded and secured to become its own envelopes. Now an international team of researchers has virtually unfolded and unlocked the contents of one of the letters and the findings were published on Tuesday in
US researchers find way to read sealed historic letters tribune.com.pk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tribune.com.pk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Loading video.
VIDEO: Computer-generated unfolding animation of sealed letter DB-1538. In our paper we describe how virtual unfolding was used to read the contents of sealed letterpackets from 17th-century Europe without physically opening. view more
Credit: Courtesy of the Unlocking History Research Group archive.
In a world first, an international team of researchers has read an unopened letter from Renaissance Europe - without breaking its seal or damaging it in any way.
The research, published in
Nature Communications, describes how an X-ray scanner used in dental research and virtual unfolding allowed the interdisciplinary team to read the contents of a securely and intricately folded letter which has remained unopened for 300 years, while preserving its valuable physical evidence.