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 ...

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, ...

Before envelopes existed, cleverly folding up a letter was a crucial privacy tactic. Only now are we learning what those techniques were, and what they reveal about cultures around the world. Imagine ...

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 ...

An unopened letter that was mailed back in 1697 but never delivered has been read by researchers who have developed a way to virtually "unfold" sealed letter packets without having to actually break ...

Mary, Queen of Scots used a “spiral locking” technique to seal the last letter she wrote before her execution, indicating that she wanted the contents to remain secret, according to research published ...

Until the 1830s, letters sent around the world were secured through a method called “letterlocking,” in which the paper was folded so intricately that opening it up broke the folds, or the “seal,” ...

In 1697 a legal professional in the French city of Lille wrote to his cousin in the Netherlands to request a relative’s death certificate, possibly in order to finalize an inheritance. He folded and ...