Space-Age Camera to Monitor Condition of Charters : New Focus Put on Nation’s Documents

The morning ritual at the National Archives begins with a rumbling sound in the stately rotunda, a signal that two large steel trap doors have swung open to lift four parchment documents 22 feet from a steel vault to a bulletproof display case.

There, under muted light in a marble altar with armed guards hovering around them, rest the most important pages in American history: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights.

For more than three decades, these parchment charters of freedom have been untouched by human hands, sandwiched individually in bronze and glass cases and hermetically sealed in protective helium gases.

Parallels Life of Nation

The history of America’s most precious documents parallels the life of a nation that was born with very little and grew to become a leader of the industrial world. Signed with quills on the stretched animal skin of parchment two centuries ago, the charters will soon be monitored by space-age technology worthy of the world’s most sophisticated laboratories.

Now, with the 200th anniversary celebration of the Constitution fast approaching, more attention than ever before is being focused on the nation’s birth certificates. And the founding fathers, who might have expected that the government they created would protect their work, would undoubtedly be astonished and proud over its extensive efforts to preserve them.

At the time they were being written, the documents were moved constantly with the new government and, by the time the Constitution was signed on Sept. 17, 1787, the Declaration had traveled to more than half a dozen cities. It would be more than a century until these national charters would find a permanent home.

Nevertheless, says Kenneth E. Harris, director of preservation policy for the Archives, “we haven’t been able to determine from visual observation that anything has happened to them.” But that does not mean the documents are immune from damage or deterioration.

Delicate Operation

Protecting the documents is an extremely delicate operation. Parchment can be easily harmed by humidity and folding, and ink, which is not absorbed by the material, can flake as it dries.

Preservation experts, aided by a high-technology system developed through NASA and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, soon will be able to examine the documents with a machine that can see what man cannot.

Last week, experts at the Archives began to assemble a new $3-million computer-assisted camera that can see five times more than the human eye and will enable preservationists to analyze the parchment pages in sections as small as one square inch.

The camera--which relies on the same technology that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration used for orbiting space telescopes--will electronically scan the documents and feed the information to a computer for future comparisons.

Preservationists plan to examine the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights annually for subtle changes in ink and parchment wrinkles. They will also watch for changes in the dimensions of the pages or in existing tears and holes.

If serious damage is detected, Archives preservation officer Alan Calmes says that “it might mean we have to take them off permanent display.” However, he adds: “I don’t expect that will be necessary.”

Past Misdeeds Irreversible

While this technology will provide an early warning system to detect any new deterioration, preservation officials lament that nothing can compensate for past mistreatment.

The Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776, and signed Aug. 2, is barely legible, and experts who examined it even 45 years ago were upset to find remnants of glue and tape. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which were exhibited much less, are in considerably better condition, experts say.

In their early years, all of the documents were handled and moved often. In 1800, they were shipped to the new capital in Washington and turned over to the State Department, which was charged with protecting important state papers.

Shortly before the British invaded Washington in 1814, Secretary of State James Monroe ordered the documents moved to a nearby Virginia grist mill. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights later were returned to the department, and the Declaration went on display at the Patent Office building from 1841 to 1876--opposite a window without any protection from damaging ultraviolet rays of the sun.

In 1894, experts decided that the Declaration was too faded to be displayed. Then, with the Constitution, it was locked in the basement for several decades, a move that preservationists say proved to be a blessing.

President Warren G. Harding ordered the documents to be turned over to the Library of Congress in 1921. And, in 1941, 19 days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Secret Service escorted them by train to a vault at Ft. Knox, Ky.

Could Survive Atomic Attack

The fact that the government chose a bullion depository as the site to house the documents at a time of crisis is of no small significance. In an indication of their priceless value, the special vault in which the charters are now kept could survive an atomic bombing, officials said in the 1950s, when the documents were moved to the Archives.

Moreover, after a fierce struggle around that time between the Library of Congress and the National Archives over where they should be kept, the documents were loaded into wooden crates, placed on mattresses in an armored carrier and moved several blocks to the Archives in a procession that included the Army band, two tanks and troops armed with machine guns.

But, in the quiet stillness of the Archives, all of this is oblivious to the millions of people who visit the Archives each year to see the documents, to glance at history. And, preservation experts at the Archives hope that millions of others like them will be able to do the same.