[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

NYTimes.com Article: New Homes for the 'Charters of Freedom'



This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by  joe.archivist@anywhere.org.

Archivists Everywhere




joe.archivist@anywhere.org

/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\


Celebrate Summer with a NYTimes.com Photo Screensaver  NYTimes.com's latest screensaver captures the unforgettable  moments from Coney Island amusement park. Enjoy these  images every day on your computer, absolutely free.   http://www.nytimes.com/partners/screensaver/index.html?eta2

\----------------------------------------------------------/

New Homes for the 'Charters of Freedom'

September 12, 2000

By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 ? After more than five years of concerns and
planning, the first of a new set of cases to protect the original
United States Constitution and other key national documents is
ready to replace older encasements that have begun to break down.

 Engineers with the federal government and private contractors have
built the first of new airtight enclosures that they say should
preserve the founding documents of the nation for more than 100
years and help make them easier for people to view.

 On Friday, the National Archives and Records Administration will
let the public see one of the new cases for the first time. The
rarely seen second page of the Constitution will go on display for
three days behind the laminated tempered glass of its up-to- date
titanium and aluminum enclosure.

 Afterward, the original page will go back into a vault and an
early model of the case containing a facsimile of the Bill of
Rights will anchor an exhibit on efforts to preserve the documents
over the years.

 All six pages of the foundation documents of the country, known as
the Charters of Freedom, will be in new encasements when the
rotunda of the National Archives building, where they are
displayed, reopens in 2003 after extensive renovations. The
rotunda, one of Washington's most popular tourist attractions, will
close on July 5, 2001, for reconstruction that will make the
documents more accessible to the handicapped and other
improvements.

 The Charter documents are the original parchment sheets on which
are written the Declaration of Independence, the four pages of the
United States Constitution and its first 10 amendments, known as
the Bill of Rights. George Washington's transmittal letter for the
Constitution will also be re-encased in one of the new enclosures.

 "The Charters of Freedom are the primary records of the nation,
the underpinnings of our society," said John W. Carlin, archivist
of the United States and head of the archives administration. "We
are going to do everything we can to preserve them while keeping
them accessible to the people."

 The new encasements, which look like large, deep picture frames,
are to replace smaller ones made in 1952 by what was then the
National Bureau of Standards. The new cases are being made and
tested by the bureau's successor agency, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, known as NIST.

 More than five years ago, keepers of the documents began noticing
subtle changes in the old, bronze-framed enclosures, which hinted
that the glass was beginning to deteriorate. Under special
lighting, a haziness was noticed in areas of inner panes of glass
that touched parts of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of
Independence. Conservators also noticed tiny white flakes in some
enclosures, possible evidence of unwanted chemical reactions caused
by air and excessive moisture.

 Outside experts commissioned by the Archives concluded that there
was no immediate danger to the documents, but recommended looking
into new enclosures.

 The old enclosures are a sandwich of three panes of glass
supported by bronze brackets and sealed with lead strips, with the
entire assembly then placed in an outer bronze frame. The document
rests on a sheet of pure cellulose backing paper covering the back
glass pane. A thin glass cover lies atop the parchment to hold it
flat. There is an empty space above this inner pane and a top sheet
of glass in front. The middle glass sheet touching the parchment is
the major concern with the old case, experts said.

 Engineers pumped air out of the enclosure and filled it with
helium, an inert gas that displaces oxygen and inhibits chemical
reactions, and enough water vapor to produce a relative humidity
inside of 25 to 35 percent before sealing it. Parchment, which is
stretched and cured animal skin, needs some moisture to keep it
from becoming brittle. But too much water can cause the material to
swell and can promote the growth of organisms if they are present.

 Richard Judson, an engineer who serves as the Archives's project
manager for the new encasements, said preliminary tests of gases
from some of the old enclosures indicated that the concerns were
warranted. Relative humidity in these cases was found to range from
41.4 percent to 48.5 percent, higher than expected, and
oxygen-containing air was found in the containers holding Page 3 of
the Constitution and the transmittal page.

 "The seal on the Page 2 enclosure looked fairly good, but the
seals on Page 3 and the transmittal page appeared to be leaking,"
Mr. Judson said. "It looks like we were correct in moving ahead
with the new enclosures as soon as we did."

 Working with more than 20 criteria for the new cases dictated by
the Archives, including high visibility for the documents and the
ability to open and reseal the cases, engineers produced a working
model early last year and spent more than a year refining it into
prototypes.

 The standards institute is building nine cases, seven to house the
documents and two prototypes that will serve as backups. Two cases
will be slightly larger than the others, measuring 39 and
one-quarter inches tall, 37 and fifteen-sixteenths inches wide and
3 and one-sixth inches deep, because the Bill of Rights is larger
than the other documents. The other cases, sized for the
Constitution, will be 33 and five-eighths inches wide, but will
share the other dimensions.

 The Archives settled on a case that has a solid aluminum alloy
base, with sections milled out of the bottom to reduce weight,
giving it a honeycomb appearance. A channel that goes around the
front edge of the base contains a tin-coated metal seal ring which
compresses when the case is tightened to create an airtight seal
with upper layers.

 Covering the enclosure and sitting atop the base is a two-layer,
three- eighths-of-an-inch-thick sheet of laminated, tempered glass
that is bonded with a layer of plastic to resist shattering. The
enclosure is bolted to a titanium metal frame that clamps the glass
against the seal ring.

 For aesthetic reasons, the gray- colored titanium is nickel-plated
to bond an outer coating of 24-carat gold. Inside each enclosure is
a thin, perforated aluminum document platform that stands about an
inch high on three, snap-out posts. This platform is detachable so
that it and the attached document can be removed from the enclosure
if disassembled.

 The document is to rest on pieces of pure cellulose paper
specially made at the University of Iowa, and both will be affixed
to the platform with thin clips of clear polyester film that exert
almost no pressure. Each piece of parchment has irregular, unique
edges and both the platform and paper for each document will be cut
in its shape so as not to be visible beneath.

 There have been a number of design changes in the enclosures since
the first engineering model was completed last year, Mr. Judson
said. For instance, engineers reduced the number of bolts to 70
from 80. They also added two covered instrument bays in the base,
he said, one for valves used to fill and purge the cases with gases
and the other for humidity and temperature sensors.

 The cases will be filled with inert argon gas instead of the
helium used in the earlier enclosures because argon is a larger
molecule that is less likely to escape. And conservators decided to
keep the relative humidity inside the new cases at 40 percent,
higher than planned for the earlier containers, to more closely
match outside conditions in the event the enclosures must be
opened.

 To help check conditions inside the enclosures if internal sensors
fail, engineers decided to install an external monitoring system
that measures water vapor and oxygen content based upon changes in
the wavelengths of a special light beamed into the case. This
required putting two small optical windows, each covered with a
sapphire lens, in the base of the enclosure and a set of three
mirrors in a box beneath the document platform inside the case.

 With this system, developed by Aerodyne Research Incorporated of
Billerica, Mass., light from an argon discharge lamp goes into the
enclosure, reflects off the mirrors and is measured coming out.
Changes in wavelength of this light caused by water vapor or oxygen
absorption should help conservators monitor the gaseous environment
inside the encasements, said Andrew Freedman, who helped develop
the system for Aerodyne.

 Opening the old cases also gives conservators their first chance
in five decades to closely examine the documents with modern
techniques. As each page comes out of its old case, the Archives
staff will remove tiny surface plugs from an edge to study the
parchment, said Kitty Nicholson, one of the conservators.

 Researchers will examine the fibers of each document and catalog
their individual characteristics and state of deterioration. By
comparing the condition of each sample with what is known about
other old parchment and unexposed examples in reference
collections, conservators will establish a standard of
deterioration for each document, Ms. Nicholson said.

 As each document comes out of its enclosure, it is placed on a
special vacuum suction table encased in highly humid air, a process
that slowly flattens parchment warped by years of changing
conditions.

 Starting with Page 2 of the Constitution and its transmittal page,
conservators are methodically examining each line of script, which
was written with iron-based gall ink that has discolored and grown
more brittle with age. Ink flakes seen pulling away from the
parchment are being reset in place by putting minuscule drops of a
special collagen solution behind them with tiny needles. This
"glue" is made by cooking gelatin with pieces of new parchment to
make a jelly solution full of collagen protein fibers that are
found naturally in animal skin, Ms. Nicholson said.

 Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, another conservator working on the
documents, said microscopic examination of the parchments had so
far shown no evidence that the deteriorating glass of the old
enclosures had marked or otherwise affected the documents. But she
said there had been some surprises.

 "We see remnants of original rule lines used to help writers keep
their lines straight," she said. Conservators also found evidence
of insect feeding on the bottom edge of the transmittal page, which
occurred at some point before its first encasement.

 Opening the pages also gives conservators their first look at the
back sides of each page, which are not well documented. The back of
the Constitution's second page revealed a surprise.

 "On the back of Page 2, we see the intimation of a hand print, a
very faint impression we didn't know was there before," Ms.
Ritzenthaler said. "We have no idea who it might belong to, but it
opens things up for a lot of speculation."
   


The New York Times on the Web
http://www.nytimes.com

/-----------------------------------------------------------------\


Visit NYTimes.com for complete access to the most authoritative  news coverage on the Web, updated throughout the day.  Become a member today! It's free!  http://www.nytimes.com?eta

\-----------------------------------------------------------------/

HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson
Racer at alyson@nytimes.com or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@nytimes.com.

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>