What security secrets lie hidden in the letters of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots? Behold the amazing “spiral lock”, a complex, beautiful, and highly secure letterlocking mechanism. Our research on it is published today! bl.uk/eblj/2021artic… 
The article coincides with a major exhibition at the @BritishLibrary, which includes letterlocking models and videos alongside original documents by both Mary and Elizabeth. bl.uk/events/elizabe…
As ever at Unlocking History, we were lucky enough to work with amazingly talented students who helped us develop this beautiful visual language for explaining our research – Nicola Araya, Annie Dunn, and Matthew Li.
The Unlocking History team is joined by Andrea Clarke and Alan Bryson of the #britishlibrary and @alisonwiggins of the #universityofglasgow, who supply responses to our research, focusing on the potential uses of these findings in new research projects and in exhibitions.
The article features more than 50 images, including step-by-step diagrams, models, and overlays showing letterlocking manipulation evidence. We hope these make our findings easier to understand and also offer a visual language for talking about letterlocking evidence.
It is published #openaccess as part of our commitment to making our research freely accessible. All the images have been uploaded to #dataverse here dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/spir…
The article draws on letters in @mitlibraries, the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, The National Archives (UK), the Harry Ransom Center, the Musée de La Poste, and Hatfield House. Thanks to everyone at these amazing institutions who made this work possible.
These findings follow our big launch article in March 2021, where we x-rayed an unopened 1697 letter with an interdisciplinary group of science and humanities scholars including @dtl @misswalsingham @DrAhrendt @amandaghassaei @h_jackson_ @dcvanderlinden nature.com/articles/s4146…
We can't wait to hear what you make of the spiral lock! And we hope this work offers some new ways to look at even extremely well-known historical documents.
As ever, our research is supported by videos at our free YouTube channel. See here for Catherine de' Medici's spiral lock, now part of @mitlibraries Distinctive Collections and discussed in the article: It has amazing evidence – if you know where to look!
Here's the truly spectacular last letter of Mary Queen of Scots, written on the eve of her execution. One of the last things she does before she dies is to secure her letter shut with the spiral lock
Here's the gorgeous letter from the Musee de La Poste, which has virtually its whole lock still intact – precious, precious evidence for this study
Here's a spiral-locked letter by Elizabeth I, writing to Henry III of France, now in the Harry Ransom Center
Great piece by @alisonflood here: theguardian.com/books/2021/dec…
Lovely coverage of our work in @arstechnica: arstechnica.com/science/2021/1…
Great shout-out from @CNN (specifically... CNN *Style* – we love it) edition.cnn.com/style/article/…
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