Sealed letter from the 17th century gives away its secrets, without opening it.

With new techniques developed by an international research team, it is now possible to read sealed early modern letters. The team’s findings appeared in Nature Communications, March 2021. The team has been able to read a sealed letter that was written over 300 years ago by using X-ray microtomography and algorithms. The X-rays reflected iron particles in the ink—common for inks of the time--, making the words visible. The letter was then virtually opened by a computer-controlled algorithm that pieced thousands of scans together to create legible text. For more information go to . Description for re-use: 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 them. Courtesy of the Unlocking History Research Group archive. The animation is produce by Jana Dambrogio (MIT).
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