Lecture
Unfolding unopened letters based on X-ray tomography
- Date
- Tuesday 17 March 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Digital Lab, Huizinga 0.09 and Online
Unfolding unopened letters based on X-ray tomography
In 16th- and 17th-century England, the Court of Wards and Liveries oversaw land inheritance. By extension, this court of law had the power to place orphans in foster families - even if their mothers were still alive - and appoint guardians to people deemed temporarily or permanently mentally incapacitated. As such, the Court held jurisdiction over some of early modern Englandʼs most vulnerable inhabitants. The records of the Court, however, are mostly badly damaged or still unopened, preventing our access to these vulnerable voices. This project seeks to gain access to these voices by virtually unfolding the locked manuscripts containing them, leaving the materiality of these documents untarnished.
The goal therefore is to develop an algorithm to virtually unfold or unroll three previously x-rayed documents so that their contents can be read without physically opening them.
This poses several interesting technical challenges, not limited to the limitations of x-ray tomography, the disturbances in the images caused by metal particles or seals present in the letters, and the intricate folding or letter-locking techniques used in the past. This presentation will describe these technical challenges and show the progress made on making these letters readable without opening them.
Registration link
We will send out the Online link in the week before the lecture.
Unfolding unopened letters based on X-ray tomography