Before Envelopes, People Protected Messages With Letterlocking

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Sunday, 11 November 2018

quote [ The practice of letterlocking in the Western world is roughly bookended by the spread of flexible, foldable paper in the 13th century and the invention of the mass-produced envelope in the 19th century. But it also fits into a 10,000-year history of document security—one that begins with clay tablets in Mesopotamia and extends all the way to today’s passwords and two-step authentication. ]

From when your public key was a signet ring. Comes with a cool video showing an actual self-destructing spy letter from Venice.

[SFW] [history]	[+7 Interesting]
[by Paracetamol@10:05pmGMT]

Comments

Paracetamol said @ 7:47pm GMT on 13th Apr

And behold! 2.5 years later we see teams doing virtual unfolding of locked letters via X-rays:

Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents imaged by X-ray microtomography

Here, the authors present a fully automatic computational approach for reconstructing and virtually unfolding volumetric scans of locked letters with complex internal folding, producing legible images of the letter’s contents and crease pattern while preserving letterlocking evidence.

1	ScoobySnacks
2	HoZay
3	Paracetamol
4	lilmookieesquire
5	Ankylosaur