Subscribe"Each year, more than 1.5 million visitors come to the National Archives Rotunda to see our country’s founding Charters of Freedom: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. While waiting in line to experience the Charters, visitors enjoy studying two large murals, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, which adorn the Rotunda walls and illuminate the historic moments when each of these documents that define our democracy were signed."
served as the inspiration for many other struggles against colonial domination
Louis MacNeice - Prayer before Birth
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
"In 1982 the National Archives invited a panel of respected scientists and preservation professionals to assess the preservation needs of the Charters of Freedom. They advised comparing images of the Charters made at intervals over time to look for changes that might raise concerns.
The National Archives turned to the Imaging Processing Lab at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to assist in this effort. Borrowing technology from America's space program, the JPL developed an imaging system like that used in space exploration. The resulting Charters Monitoring System (CMS) created digital image files by scanning one-inch squares on each document.
During imaging, the encased document lay on a tabletop with legs that floated on nitrogen in cylinders, which acted as shock absorbers to eliminate vibration. An overhead charged-couple device 'camera' captured the relative brightness of 1,024 lines of 1,024 pixels in each patch through glass layers, using precise positioning to allow return to the exact spot in future scans.
The National Archives received the Charters Monitoring System in 1987. Conservation staff made baseline measurements for patches on the pages of the Charters. In following years, patches were re-scanned and compared pixel by pixel to the baseline image, looking for physical changes.
In 1996, after more than 125 scans, staff reported the findings. The CMS did not reveal feared changes in ink intensity or loss of ink. In all the scans on the seven encased documents, just one insecure flake of ink was noted on a raised ridge of parchment on the Transmittal Page of the Constitution.
But if the ink of 1787 was holding its own, the encasements of 1951 were not.
The CMS space-age technology ultimately confirmed findings made in 1987 with the microscope: minute crystals and microdroplets of liquid were found on surfaces of the two glass sheets over each document. The scans confirmed that these changes in the glass progressed between 1987 and 1995. Conservators using a binocular microscope could see crystals and liquid droplets on the glass surfaces. These signs of glass deterioration were a clue to the relative humidity inside the encasements. Glass deteriorates at a relative humidity greater than 40 percent. But the encasement helium had been carefully humidified to 30 percent. This low humidity was intended to minimize parchment hydrolysis, a chemical term that means 'water cutting.' The CMS scans confirmed evidence of progressive glass deterioration, which was a major impetus in deciding to re-encase the Charters of Freedom."
"Never have a few pieces of animal hide been subject to such meticulous and expensive attention. But these aren't just any old pieces of parchment. They are America's priceless Charters of Freedom: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights....NOVA captures the consultations of a blue-ribbon panel appointed to preserve the Charters using whatever technology necessary." [video preview]
"Charters of Freedom is an outstanding new publication of the National Archives (Publication No. 53-14. Pp 12. $.25). Here, for the first time, readable facsimiles of three great documents of American history -- the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."
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posted by mazola at 6:11 AM on July 4 [1 favorite]