'BLITZED' ROYAL AUTOGRAPHS

Mt Benger Mail, 10 September 1941, Page 1

'BLITZED' ROYAL AUTOGRAPHS

ih-de Readable Again by London Police Chemists

r Signatures of King Edwaiu Vll and Queen Alexandra in a book reduced to ashes by Nazi incendiary bombs have been made legible again by a new chemical process discovered by research chemists of Loudon’s Metropolitan Police Laboratory.. Tlie autographs were written Ui 1&83, when the Royal pair were Prince and Princess of Wales, in tlie visitors’ book of the City of Loudon College, ■which since ISdjS has been giving business training lo young men and women employ’d in the City of London, many of whom have lately emigrated to the Dominions and Colonies. Razed to the ground one night by mcendiary bombs, the College mst all its possessions, yet resumed work next day in loaned premises without even a sheet of uotepaper-.

The blackened remains of its treasured visitors’ book were sent to the Police Laboratory Micro the page bearing the Royal signatures was treated with chloral hydrate in a 25 pm - ecu alcoholic solution and dried a ■

'■tu. Centigrade. After repealing tins several times, a mass of chloral hydrate crystals formed on the surface, and at this'stage i similar solution, containing 10 icr cent glycerine, was applied :m i the paper dried as before. If was then photographed, and the rcfidt was excellent. The process, which needs no special apparatus, is proving of great value where important documents in ink, typescript or print, arc burned >y enemy action.