Hundreds of years ago, people developed ingenious methods to secure their letters from prying eyes – and they did it with only paper, adhesive and folds. Late at night on 8 February 1587, an ...

Centuries before encrypted texts and secure video conferencing, people relied on physical engineering to keep their written messages sturdy, sealed, and secure against eavesdroppers. In a new book, ...

On the eve of her execution in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote what is thought to be her very last letter. She had been imprisoned for nearly 20 years for the perceived threat she represented to ...

The Brienne trunk contained hundreds of unopened letters. Thie one features a gold wax seal. For years, Jana Dambrogio, a conservator at MIT, has been studying the elaborate ways people used to fold ...

In a steady, stately script, an anonymous Dutch writer living around 1700 wrote a letter: “I never thought you’d be such a miserable dog,” it went. “If you’ve got something to say, just say it to my ...

The letters had been folded using a mysterious technique. This is an Inside Science story. Unopened letters more than 300 years old that were folded using mysterious techniques have now been read for ...

In 1697, a man named Jacques Sennacque wrote a letter to his cousin, a French merchant named Pierre Le Pers, requesting a certified death certificate for another man named Daniel Le Pers (presumably ...

Recent research highlights the use of letterlocking techniques by Queen Elizabeth, Catherine de’ Medici and Mary Queen of Scots. By William J. Broad To safeguard the most important royal ...

On July 31, 1697, Jacques Sennacques sent a letter to his cousin—one Pierre Le Pers, a French merchant living in the Hague—begging him, for the love of Pete (that’s paraphrased), to send him a death ...