Magic: Faded Census Records to Re-Appear

This is about as close to magic as I can imagine. Picture in your mind original census pages that have faded so badly that the enumerators' handwriting is no longer visible. I am not talking about ink that has faded a bit. In this case, the ink is gone, not even visible on the page. All you can see is the page as it was printed and given to the enumerators (census takers) with the pre-printed text and boxes. These pages look as if they were never filled out, and yet you know they were.

Now, add in a mix of digital photography and different lights. Shake well with some computer enhancements. The result? Readable images!

If this isn't magic, I don't know what is.

Jack Reese at The Generations Network started working through the 1851 Manchester, England, census. He kept finding himself staring at a bunch of nothing. Ink had faded. Water damage left mold that was eating away at what was left of the paper. Some pages were just fragments. Others? Completely blank.

For Jack, it was a fun problem. After all, he is an engineer with two areas of special expertise: computer imaging and family history.

He started with a Nikon digital camera, disassembled it, replaced filters, and added specialized lenses. Next he built a box, “a complete light-controlled enclosure that we could house our custom lights and camera in.” He then used a mix of light sources: infrared, ultraviolet, fluorescent, incandescent, and more.

You can see magician Jack's results on the Ancestry Magazine's web site at http://www.ancestrymagazine.com/2009/04/genea-Logic/preserving-genealogical-records.

The site includes sample before-and-after images of the pages. The results are amazing.

For the next few months, the camera will prove its mettle at The National Archives in London, capturing images of that 1851 Manchester census. Once snapped, keyed, and indexed, pages containing some 200,000+ names that might have been lost will be available at your fingertips on Ancestry.com.

Comments

[Chad Hanna]

My amusement knows no bounds! Over 196,000 of those names have already been recovered by a team from the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society (under UV light) in a 12 year project and were online (with synthetic images) on http://www.familyhistoryonline.net from Christmas 2006 until its closure on 2nd March 2009. See also http://www.1851-unfilmed.org.uk for more background on this work.

[Dick Eastman]

What are "synthetic images?"

[Ken Wogan]

The Ancestry publicity is unsurprising given that it is their commercial interests but I would have expected a respected commentator like yourself to have known about, and mentioned the work done by enthusiastic volunteers and made available to the wider genealogical community since 2006.

As to synthetic images a moments glance at the site mentioned would have told you that they are reconstructed images of which an example is displayed.

[C Prior]

Amazing and wonderful

[Dick Eastman]

So they are transcriptions, not the original documents, right?

[lauren barton]

Once again commercial interests are being pushed over the achievements of dozens of volunteers who have rescued the 1851 water damaged census without asking for reward by working weekends at the National Archives. Look at www.1851-unfilmed.org.uk for the real story here.

[Dae Powell]

Ohh, thanks for link, Lauren. THAT is the way to do it. Lovely and kudos to all the volunteers.

Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Gene]

What does it say about some us when our sense of amazement at such things is dimmed? I work with computers and cameras all the time and am still amazed at what can be accomplished. Are there other ways? Sure. May it have already been done with hard work and grit? Absolutely, but such things should be a wonder and blessing to us. Please in our society sometimes dulled by humans that can truly underwhelm and disappoint us, don't let our sense of amazement be dulled to the point of apathy. Thank you Jack Reese!

[Lydia Christian]

Sorry Dick but this sounds suspicously like you are being paid by Ancestry, to promote a commercial enterprise.
Ancestry are doing this to earn lots of money, while volunteers who have worked hard over several years to recover these census details, which have already been seen by thousands and thousands of people, have given of their time freely and without complaint.
The least you could do is aknowledge these volunteers.
Credit where credit is due at least Dick, or are you really getting paid by Ancestry and the like?

[Richard Heaton]

Reading the announcement I found it interesting on two levels : -

Most obviously the choice to demonstrated the success of the process by recovering the "lost" Manchester Census, much of which has been already been recovered due to the hard work of a small team of volunteers(as mentioned in earlier comments), seemed a bit unusual, but it will be interesting to see what additional material in practise can be recovered and the differences between the transcipts; I'm sure there are other census pages which could benefit from similar technology (I'd be very interested in seeing the 1841 census for William Street in Windsor for example);

Secondly I wondered is this technology is new, or a novel use of existing technology - I'm sure in common with other researchers I've run into quite a few damaged and partly legible documents in archives which would be great read and if Jim Reese has developed a process or methodology to recover lost material in a cost effective manner he deserves all our thanks.

[Jack Sprat]

Dick is exactly right. What the volunteers did is transcribe the information from what was eye-readable from the original schedules. But no one else could check their work for accuracy because the originals were never filmed and the PRO does not make the schedules available to researchers because of their condition. Microfilming would not have worked anyway -- only multi-spectral imaging would. Which is extremely expensive to do. So only a large corporation was willing to undertake the work involved.

So now there will be legible images available to everyone of the schedules -- even of those pages for which the volunteer transcribers could read absolutely nothing. So everyone can decide for themselves whether the volunteer transcribers got it right or wrong.

Thus, I don't think anyone is trying to take anything away from the work that the volunteers did. It is just that they could only go so far, and a company like Ancestry was needed to finish what needed to be done.

[Marilyn]

One would hope that Ancestry itself would use this new technology to re-scan the 1900 and 1910 US censuses that have many unreadable pages.

[Adrian B]

"commercial interests are being pushed over the achievements of dozens of volunteers"
No - commercial interests are pushing their OWN work. Surprised?

Let's be absolutely clear - the work done by the volunteers was great but this is the reality of the challenge for amateur groups - make sure everyone knows about it and don't be surprised if a commercial company happens to choose your project later on. Get nimble and move on like some British family history societies have done after several companies produced their own on-line censuses and trashed sales of FHS transcripts and indices for single counties.

Besides which, there does appear to be an advance here for which credit should be given - recreating the original images instead of transcripts.

[Dick Eastman]

---> Sorry Dick but this sounds suspicously like you are being paid by Ancestry...

Sadly, I am not. I wish I was, I could use the money. But they don't pay me.

I did get a sneak preview of this service in January but only a verbal description of what Ancestry hoped to accomplish. At that time, the company had no finished images ready to show. I saw the final product for the first time yesterday and I wrote the article a few minutes later.

I am also a bit surprised at the comments here. C'mon, don't genealogists understand the difference between transcriptions and images of the original records? The differences are HUGE. I love transcriptions and have used them many times. But, given a choice, I always prefer to look at the original records. So does every professional and advanced amateur genealogist I know.

The efforts of the volunteers are commendable and I am impressed that so many people spent so much time and effort under what must have been difficult conditions. They provided a great service to genealogists for several years by providing the best possible service at that time. But time marches on. Nothing remains "the best" forever. We now have a new method of looking at images of the ORIGINAL records which strikes me as a major improvement. It is the best solution today and will remain the best until an even better solution is invented.

This is not intended to minimize recognition of the hard work performed by the volunteers, but to point out that a new solution provides even more value than the old.

Which do you prefer: transcriptions or original records?

- Dick Eastman

[Rosemary Buettner]

I much prefer the original records. Now if Ancestry can use this wonderful new technique on the 1861 Canadian Census of Ontario, Bedford Township, I can go a good way toward obtaining new knowledge of my ancestors. Many thanks to all involved, including the original volunteers. Rosemary

[Joyce Wilson]

Personally,I get really tired of the constantly knocking of Ancestry. There are always things that you would prefer were different. And I think Roots web, (pre ancestry days) was very on target and got alot going in the right direction, I resent having the search methods changed for different databases so frequently, sometimes for better, but sometimes not-- but in my little isolated corner of the outback world of low populated area of the states, I am very thankful that I "can purchase" a subscrition to Ancestry and access it at almost any time of the 24 hours available to someone with insomnia! Admittedly, if you plan a day for concentrated research, thats the day for concentrating on a detatiled search, that is the day they will have all services down updating. But that is just lifes calls. I sometimes check transcriptons to see what a "trained" transcriber decided that surname was--but I would miss alot if I depended on trancscriptions!
And yest, Ancestry sometimes turns up the wrong pages etc. But this is a business guys, you are paying for services that save you time and money and like most services-sometimes it is not perfect.
If Ancestry scanned original county record books for weddings, land transfers and such, I would prefer that to postings and transcripions too. Even at airline cheap rate sales--I cannot afford the time and money to do even a tenth of the research trips that I would like to make, and considering the time that is always wasted finding the right place to search, the right opening hours and so on. Just knock it off please! And no, I do not work for Ancestry either!

[Ken Wogan]

Much is being made of the fact that Ancestry are providing images as opposed to transcriptions but let's not forget that Ancestry also needs a transcription for it's indexes, otherwise we won't be able to search this data.

What will be really interesting will be a comparison of the accuracy of the MLFHS transcription and the Ancestry version.

[Jim Castellan]

Just back from a research trip and catching up. This is a nice recovery but nothing compared to the recovery of some unique Archemedes texts washed off and written over in a palimpsest document of the 13th? century. (Palimpsest texts are on reused vellum. They used to scrub off old texts and reuse the vellum which was scarce in the "really old" days.)

http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/

[Alex Woodle]

I am very impressed with this technology and I hope, as previously noted by someone else, that it is employed to improve those previously scanned U. S. censuses which have faded ink images.

I prefer original documents, because at that level there is only possibility of one layer of mistranscription. The 1880 U. S. census transcription of my family by LDS volunteers is horrendous and efforts to have Mormons correct it only receives lip service. At least Ancestry has provisions for corrections. If my research was lost, descendants would not find the family, because the type of error removes the name from soundex consideration. I agree with Dick, that original documents are more solid gold than ones that have gone through another layer of transcription.

Alex Woodle

[Brian C. Keith]

Are Ancestry's "original records" really "original records" if they've been digitally modified to such a degree that what we see isn't apparent to the unaided eye? In other words, if they really are "original records", we'd be seeing digitized images of blank pages on ancestry.com, right?

I'm not sure I'd trust their "original records" over transcriptions. I'm not even sure I'd trust their transcriptions, to be honest, based on my previous experience with their indexes, which have been sorely mistranscribed, IMO.

[Dick Eastman]

In this case, Ancestry's images will be those of the original records. They are not transcriptions.

- Dick Eastman
(sent from my iPhone)

[Ed Papenfuse]

Will Jack Reese make the technical aspects of his modifications and the specs for the box available to non profits for their use? Commercial systems that claim to do the same with faded etc. records are very expensive. Do you have Jack's email?

Ed Papenfuse
Maryland State Archivist

[Dick Eastman]

---> Will Jack Reese make the technical aspects of his modifications and the specs for the box available to non profits for their use?

I am no lawyer, but I don't believe he will be legally able to do so. He did his research and developed the process as an employee of The Generations Network. Since he was paid for his work, his employer presumably owns all the rights to his new process(es).

That's the way it has always worked at all other corporations, I assume it is the same this time.

- Dick Eastman