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At the cutting edge after 378 years
Restored artefact joins the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
14 February 2020
A project led by researchers at UCL enabled reconstruction of a fire-damaged artefact of UNESCO Memory of the World Status.
The Great Parchment Book of The Honourable The Irish Society, a survey compiled in 1639, has been likened to the Domesday Book. It was honoured at UNESCO鈥檚 UK Memory of the World awards in Cardiff. The event marks heritage collections of 鈥榦utstanding significance to the UK鈥�.
Researchers at 宅男视频 EngD Centre for Virtual Environments, Interaction & Visualisation, in collaboration with the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), where the parchment book remains as part of the City of London鈥檚 collections, developed bespoke software to digitise the Great Parchment book that was previously unreadable for over 200 years due to fire damage; the uneven shrinkage and distortion caused by the fire rendered much of the text inaccessible.
Starting in 2010, as part of an overarching initiative by LMA to restore and transcribe the parchment book, 宅男视频 cutting-edge digital imaging project, led by Professor Tim Weyrich, successfully imaged its over 300 pages, capturing 50 to 60 high resolution images of each page.
Software was then developed to generate a 3D model which allowed viewing of the damaged pages at archival resolution.
A key feature of the software is to dynamically flatten these models virtually on screen, allowing the contents of the book to be accessed more easily and without further handling of the document.听
The cultural importance of the team鈥檚 work is highlighted by Tim Weyrich:
鈥�鈥淭he engagement with the humanities鈥� unique problem domain allowed us to go beyond mere application of known techniques, pushing the boundary in both cultural heritage imaging and computer science.鈥�
- Learn more about the project at and