June 04, 2003
Living Science Fiction

BBCnews is featuring this article about a new use for laser scanners and computer cutters... creating exact duplicates of ancient clay tablets.

I think this technology is completely amazing. For a long time in the archeology/anthropology field one of the toughest things was getting a fossile or artifact out to other people for review. The best you could hope for was an expensive, reasonably-but-not-quite accurate cast of the object. Far more common was the less-than-ideal photographs or diagrams. Heated academic debates have gone on for decades simply because people couldn't get a good look at the items.

I think it's only a matter of time before the laser scanners get small and cheap enough to take out into the field. The cutters and carvers will probably never be very portable, but like paper copy machines probably won't need to be.

I find it amazing to think that some day, probably soon, a paleoanthropologist will dig out a skull or jaw or tooth, place it in a scanner, make a transmission, and literally within minutes colleagues on the other side of the world could be looking at a high-fidelity model of what was just pulled out of the ground. What's more, copies of that file could be made and, like the clay tablets in the BBC article, created by anyone with access to the correct machine.

Amazing.

Posted by scott at June 04, 2003 10:01 AM

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Comments

Wow that is sooooo very cool. Just think of all those 3D objects can now be preserved digitally. That is wonderful. Even items that are exposed to the elements and could wear away could be preserved!

Posted by: Carrie on June 4, 2003 02:21 PM

very cool. also, unless "intellectual property" and costs and the like rear their ugly heads, it means every small museum and library could potentially have displays of artifact or fossil reproductions. Or schools.


still, I wonder how long before someone applies the thing to their bum and sends the first virtual mooning?

Posted by: ricki on June 4, 2003 06:59 PM

Hopefully, it won't mean that someone else will find a way to make a replica good enough to be taken as the real thing to everyone (including the experts).
It's a great idea for academics, but then so was the Internet (supposedly).

Posted by: Cindy on June 7, 2003 11:48 PM
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