The origami of the Western world .. Treasures of locked messages revealed by modern digital technology

Hours before her execution in 1587, Queen Mary I of Scots sent a letter to King Henry III of France, brother of her ex-husband, Francois II.

Not only did Mary sign the letter, but she folded it several times and punched a hole in which she carefully inserted a part of his story, creating a secure seal for the letter.

Such methods of locking messages were necessary during this period to protect them from prying eyes, but this art disappeared in the 1930s.

New technology

In a report published by the American newspaper "New York Times" (New York Times), writer William Broad says that a team of researchers recently devised a new way to view the contents of closed letters without harming these priceless historical treasures.

The team - made up of 11 scientists and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other research institutions - announced the development of a virtual reality technology that allows them to see the content of messages and how to lock them without destroying them.

In the paper published in Nature Communications, the team clarifies the details of this digital technology by uncovering the contents of 4 non-deliverable messages written between 1680 and 1706.

The new method allows the contents of locked messages to be viewed without harming them (Research Group for Opening History Latches)

The study's lead author, Jana D'Ambrogio, says that her belief in the historical value these messages contained led her to ask her technology colleagues to find a way to digitally view their content.

In 2014, scholars could only read and study these letters by opening them, which often resulted in the destruction of these historical documents and the corruption of evidence explaining how to close them.

"We needed to keep the originals, because information could be obtained from them constantly, especially if they were kept locked," D'Ambrogio says.

The first step - according to the digital method invented by the researchers - is to scan the message with an advanced X-ray machine, where the three-dimensional image reveals the internal content of the message, then the computer analyzes the image and decodes the folds digitally until the paper becomes flat and the entire text can be read.

Priene Group

The research team is currently working on the contents of the "BRIENNE COLLECTION" in a wooden box in the Dutch city of The Hague, a collection of 3,148 written letters, of which 577 have never been opened.

Letter dated July 31, 1697, from a merchant in the French city of Lille to a French merchant in The Hague (Research Group for Openning of History)

Among the letters that the team opened digitally from the Priene Group, a letter written on July 31, 1697, sent from Lille, France, to a French merchant in The Hague, which included a request for a certified copy of a death certificate.

The researchers hope that the disclosure of the contents of the "Priene Group" will enrich historical research on the early modern era of the history of the European continent and everything related to politics, religion, music, theater and migration patterns in the region.

Methods of locking messages

In addition to creating this new technology, the team studied about 250,000 messages, and monitored 12 locking methods, and 64 techniques, including different types of folding and punching, and they divided them into categories according to the degree of locking tightness.

Daniel Smith, a lecturer in the English department at King's College London, said, "This art was so rich that the type of lock is considered a personal signature that expresses the owner and embodies part of his personality."

The type of lock is considered as a signature that expresses the owner and embodies an aspect of his personality (The History Lock Opening Research Group)

According to the author, the digital technology shortened a lot of time, as researchers spent a full decade of time understanding the way in which Mary the First closed her message to her brother-in-law, but the new technology was able to reveal the secret in a matter of a few days.

Researcher Amanda Gasai of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says the team is close to developing the technology to reveal methods of locking messages within hours, not days.