The Venice “Archivio Di Stato”: innovating digitization with x-ray tomography

We present x-ray imaging results for diverse iron-based-ink antique writings - single-page manuscripts, stacks and scrolls - from the 16th century on. The objective is to elaborate new digitization techniques by x-ray tomography for the “Venice Time Machine” (VTM) project in collaboration with the “Archivio di Stato”. The technique can potentially read unopened - perhaps unopenable - documents and speed up the entire digitization process of large collections. The technique is feasible thanks to the highly absorbing chemical elements in ancient European ink recipes. The corresponding x-ray contrast allows character reading with reasonably short exposure times. The impact is quite relevant: the potential feasibility of “softer” and faster digitization of huge collections like the Archivio di Stato - 80 km of documents spanning 10 centuries.