[gen220]

There was a cool article on this subject a few weeks ago: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972607811/reading-a-letter-th...

Basically, opening centuries-old letters that are sealed with this technique is usually a destructive process: you might end up rendering some portions of the letter unreadable.

As such, many of these letters have never been opened! They might contain interesting things, but we have no idea.

Some researchers figured out a way to "unfold" X-rays of these intricately-locked letters, to render the letter legible without having to actually open it! It's a pretty cool technique.

The underlying paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21326-w

[jedimastert]

That articles leads me to one of my kinds of YouTube channels, and my favor type of little corner of the internet: A vast array of oddly specific and niche knowledge I had no idea I wanted

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNPZ-f_IWDLz2S1hO027hRQ

[morsch]

Great style. Very old school. A candidate for (unintentional?) ASMR.

It seems almost impossible to find these videos or channels intentionally, you can only stumble upon them.

[hinkley]

Some of the things we've done with old letters are fascinating.

I remember when they figured out how to use spectral analysis to 'see' the solvents that soak into paper from the ink, allowing them to read words that had flaked off due to the ink or the paper delaminating, especially at the edges of paper.

[msp-m]

this is one of those technologies - drop a letter from centuries ago onto an x-ray and let it get displayed on a computer screen - that will really make future tech look like "magic"