In the past, letters were folded several times and according to a certain method, in order not to reveal their secrets, and this was in the seventeenth century, when letters were placed in a box and delivered to their owners.
Kiev. Ukraine. Ukraine Gate – March 07, 2021 – Culture
But scientists recently found an old box in which many letters were not delivered to their owners so that they remained in the same fold, and this box bears the name of Brina, which is the name of the post office manager who collected the letters, which for some reason were not delivered to the recipients.
It has been displayed in the museum in The Hague, which contains 2,600 letters from 1680 to 1706 of which 600 were never printed.
Therefore, the scholars tried to read the letters, so they sought help from scientists from the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands, and followed a modern method of reading by means of accurate X-ray tomography to read the sealed papers, and in this way it allowed them to detect and read the letters of the seventeenth century approximately without harming them.
The precise X-ray tomography method has been used to scan historical documents before, but those letters of no more than one or two folds are allowed to be read, but in the new work, scientists have been able to build an algorithm that allows you to read the folded letters repeatedly.
The researchers scanned the leaves using ultra-sensitive X-rays, and then their algorithm analyzed the folds and determined how precisely the paper was folded and in what sequence these folds were made. Then a 3D model of writing was created, which scientists actually published.
As part of the work, the researchers were able to read the full text of a letter dated July 21, 1697. In the future, scholars plan to continue deciphering the texts from another box in the museum known as Prien.
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Source: Ukrgate