Virtual reading of a large ancient handwritten science book

• Published in: Microchemical Journal (ISSN: 0026-265X), vol. 125, p. 185-189
• Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2016

We present a fundamental development step of a new technique to read and digitize ancient handwritten documents. Chemical analysis by x-ray fluorescence and x-ray tomography enabled us to decipher words and drawings from inside a closed, 200-pages 18 th century handwritten book. The ink chemistry is essential: tomographic reading is feasible thanks to the iron present in ancient inks (iron gall) over one millennium – whereas carbon or organic inks do not provide sufficient x-ray contrast. The results presented are a key progress towards the ultimate goal of the technique: non-invasive reading of fragile and/or unopenable documents.

Keywords: CIBM-PC

Reference

• EPFL-ARTICLE-213815
• doi:10.1016/j.microc.2015.11.024
• View record in Web of Science

Record created on 2015-11-30, modified on 2017-05-12