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Family History Documents and Artefacts => Graveyards and Gravestones => Topic started by: Keith Sherwood on Friday 23 January 09 15:02 GMT (UK)
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Hi, Everyone.
It occurred to me today as I walked through a couple of Cambridgeshire churchyards, trying to decipher headstones whose inscriptions had been pretty much erased by a combination of wind and rain over the years, whether modern technology has ever been used to discover what long-lost inscriptions might have once said.
Someone I was talking to recently said that lasers have a remarkable ability to pick up details that don't appear to the naked eye to still be visible. Are there any scientific minds out there who might know whether there are such things as portable lasers or scanners, and indeed whether any technology such as this has ever been used as a tool in family history research on fading gravestones?
Just thought I'd ask...
Regards, keith
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Sounds like a good question for a University Physics or Forensics Dept.
Lasers, thermal imaging, . . ?
Hugo
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Found it! I knew I'd read something, somewhere, sometime ... but not exactly portable!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7024672.stm
:D
Koromo
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What about taking a good photo, then using Adobe Photoshop use to invert image (think thats the word?)
I used to use it to change the characteristics of the photo (photo goes a deep purple colour, allowing the lettering to be read).
The computer must be top notch to allow the once 6/8meg picture to change into 128/256 meg picture file.
If the stonework containing the inscription is badly corroded, nothing that I have ever seen can resurrect the image.
Brian
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If the stonework containing the inscription is badly corroded, nothing that I have ever seen can resurrect the image.
Brian
Well, five years ago I would have believed you, but I saw a feature on the news this week about a professor who can get fingerprints from metal that has been wiped clean. So, I wouldn't ever say it's impossible.
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All very interesting,
But I can't see a gadget that might do the trick being marketed at a local family history fair in the near future. For technology in our family history research we'll have to make do for the time being with our good old fiche and microfilm readers; and hope that weather conditions suit next time we're stumbling round that churchyard/cemetery. If the light shines across the stone from a certain angle at a certain time of day; if it's just been raining and the stones are wet; if moss has grown in the inscription and its miraculously picked out in green. That sort of thing...
keith
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Thanks for posting that link Koromo..... the article was very interesting and the results they were getting were truly amazing.
Keith you forgot: standing on your head, holding your breath and having angels on your shoulder. ;D ;D
dollylee
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What about taking a good photo, then using Adobe Photoshop use to invert image (think thats the word?)
We try that on a regular basis but it doesn't add much...there's too little image and too much clutter usually.... :-\
Cheers,
China
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All very interesting,
But I can't see a gadget that might do the trick being marketed at a local family history fair in the near future. For technology in our family history research we'll have to make do for the time being with our good old fiche and microfilm readers; and hope that weather conditions suit next time we're stumbling round that churchyard/cemetery. If the light shines across the stone from a certain angle at a certain time of day; if it's just been raining and the stones are wet; if moss has grown in the inscription and its miraculously picked out in green. That sort of thing...
keith
Ahh, whether it's actually possible, and whether the technology would be cheap enough for domestic use are two different things ! ;D
Whenever I visit a churchyard these days I take digital photos in high resolution of as many headstones as I can, and from at least two different angles. In the past I have had some success in adjusting the image in various ways in a photo editor, and I have managed to make out wording that couldn't be read in the original photos. To be honest, decyphering headstone inscriptions has turned out to be much less of a problem for me than I first envisaged when I first started, because most of my ancestors were too poor to have them ! :)
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Dollylee,
Sorry, I forgot about the necessity to have those angels on (peering over?) my shoulders...
Nick, and it sounds as though you're the nearest thing to applying modern technology to this problem!
Regards, keith
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http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,309035.0.html
If you have a look at this link you will see the saga. I did not do the final repair on this tombstone.
All credit is to Paulatoo.
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For me the exciting technology advance is the technique developed by the Church of the LDS to read very old documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls. I saw somewhere about their recovery of writing from apparently blank and badly smudged roman manuscripts, unfortunately I can't recall where.
What I keep hoping to hear is that they have used the technology to read all the copies of unreadable/damp-damaged parish records they hold and that they are now available for us to use. Unfortunately I suspect that they will be too busy on their current digitisation project to tackle them sometime soon.
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Very interesting topic indeed.
My wife's ancestor who was transported to Oz in 1834 did well after his TOL and was a respected blacksmith in the Parramatta area.
He was buried in All Saints burial ground and a respectable sandstone tombstone erected and added to as other members of the family were buried.
The sandstone was soft (like much of local sandstone) and erosion had made 90% of it unreadable.
Then,after a while, I read a paper about 'low angle viewing for defects in building surfaces' (important to my vocation) b]so I thought about the tombstone and found that my attempts to read it in the past had been usually late in the day as the sun was going down (the tombstone faced east).
So I tried looking at it around midday when the sun was at a low angle and 'bingo' I could read every name and date.
The details have now been safely recorded.
joboy
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So I tried looking at it around midday when the sun was at a low angle and 'bingo' I could read every name and date.
The details have now been safely recorded.
joboy
Thats great joboy, but I am a little confused. If it is midday how can the sun be at a low angle ???
Would love to use this method on future graveyard expeditions ;)
Margaret
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Well Margaret .. if you shon a torch directly on to the surface (as you normally would) you would see little .. but if you laid the torch full length (ie handle as well) on the face of the surface you would see any impression or defect that was there.
You can try this out by selecting perhaps a painted wall in your home and seeing the number of imperfections there ... on what you thought may have been a very smooth surface.
Joe
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Thanks joboy, I get it ;D
but I won't do your suggested experiment cause then OH might see what a lousy job I did on the plastering and painting ;D ;D
Margaret
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I have no doubts about it!! .. so try it and you will be shocked.
Joe
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Well Margaret .. if you shon a torch directly on to the surface (as you normally would) you would see little .. but if you laid the torch full length (ie handle as well) on the face of the surface you would see any impression or defect that was there.
You can try this out by selecting perhaps a painted wall in your home and seeing the number of imperfections there ... on what you thought may have been a very smooth surface.
Joe
The lower story of my 100 year old house is constructed from very soft red brick, and when the sun is at a certain angle in the late afternoon, you can read every piece of graffiti that has been scratched into it in the last 100 years :)
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Hello chatters,
just adding an idea I came across on a mailing list several years ago:
>"It's wonderful where you find ideas for reading gravestone lettering. I came across this in a detective story called "Grave Misgivings' by Kate Callison. I haven't tried it and I don't suggest that anyone does it but the method is to use a can of shaving foam and a rubber squeegee and a bucket of water.
You spray the foam on the area of the inscription and then squeegee off the excess foam. The foam fills the indentations and the letters are supposed to become readable. When the inscription has been deciphered or photographed the inscription is cleaned down with the contents of the bucket.
>
>Ray Lewis
>Hazelmere Western Australia"
Haven't tried it but at least it's low tech!
Robyn in Australia