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Police Forensics Team Salvage Blind Authors' Inkless Novel Pages
Blind author Trish Vickers wrote 26 pages of her novel's first chapter when her son noticed she was writing without ink. Her manuscript was saved however after they took it to the Dorset Police department. A forensic team there worked on it in their spare time, and after 5 months they were able to recover the lost pages. Vickers said: “I think they used a combination of various lights at different angles to see if they could get the impression made by my pen. I am so happy, pleased and grateful. It was really nice of them and I want to thank them for helping me out.”
That was truly an upstanding thing to do.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Out of all the things the cops could do with their spare time (and I assume a small amount of public resources), I'd say that I fully agree with this one. They helped somebody out, got to practice obviously useful forensics skills, and they were practical actual science. No one told them what the words on the pages were supposed to say, they had to figure them out (with help from the author, perhaps)
Depending on the type of pen and the pressure used, that method may not be sensitive enough for good reconstruction of the data. However, since it's a destructive technique, if you try it first and it fails, you've ruined your ability to try any other techniques.
Hi, old person here. It's still strange She was writing by hand. Long before we had computers to do our writing, we still used keyboards. I know you kids might not be that familiar with them, but we called them 'typewriters'. They have braille versions of them, so a blind person could type pages they could proofread themselves years and years ago.
Let's say to an equivalently bucolic setting, like Wisconsin outside Madison, or Dubuque Iowa.
One reason that the UK is still superior to the US, despite being blighted by The City, and laws made by silk breeches, and omnipresent camera vision.
In America, this story would have ended in a tasering, or pepper-spray: like that poor fellow who's MediLert malfunctioned.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/nyregion/fatal-shooting-of-ex-marine-by-white-plains-police-raises-questions.html?_r=2
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."