History of Text Technologies: Letterlocking

What many and varied ways have humans used to write over the years? Through a series of workshops on the History of Text Technologies, scheduled over the 2026-2027 academic year, we will investigate this question. We'll look at books from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, and we'll make some of our own. 

Before there were pseudo-random encryption keys generated by computer algorithms, there was a practice of folding and sealing letters to ensure security - also known as letterlocking. On Wednesday, October 21, SIMS Curator for Digital Humanities Dot Porter and Applied Data Science Librarian Jajwalya Karajgikar will lead a workshop where we will learn about the practice and process of letterlocking, discuss how it fits into the history of cryptography and encryption (referencing materials from Penn's manuscript collections), and we'll make our own locked letters. The basis of our workshop is the Letterlocking Project, and we'll be drawing on material from the project website and book. Image is from the Letterlocking Project website.

History of Text Technologies is sponsored by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies and will be held in the Vitale II Lab for Digital Humanities & Book History (Van Pelt Library 623).