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, which would reveal to intended recipients if someone else had read the letters first.