Preserving Our Rights — Scientifically

While a really great idea may endure, any material it may have been written down on is comparatively fleeting. Keeping your original document in good condition is always a good practice.

And just a few short years ago, the National Archives took this to heart in a very precise, high-tech manner in order to keep our nation's Charter of Freedom documents — original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution — in good condition for generations to come.

After sustaining more than 150 years of frequent movement and suspect storage, these documents were placed in what was intended to be permanent protective storage in the early 1950s. However, during the 1980s and 1990s, it became evident that the Charter documents had sustained permanent damage prior to their encasement and even some subsequent damage since.

The painstaking, no-room-for-error conservation project took approximately five years and involved repairing damage, reversing signs of age, and designing a completely new storage environment to stave off the effects of UV radiation, moisture, mold and countless other atmospheric agents of harm.

The project began with complete microscopic scale investigation of the originals with the use of a high-resolution digital scanner. Following this, the document encasements were opened, exposing the originals to direct air and handling for the first time since the early '50s (and the last time in quite awhile, archivists expect).

The new document storage is state-of-the-art and relies on recent advancements in a wide variety of technical disciplines such as optics, metallurgy and engineering. The storage system includes surrounding the documents with inert argon gas, and maintains consistent temperature and 40 percent relative humidity conditions that are optimal for conservation of parchment.

The restored and resealed documents were unveiled in their new permanent storage at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

There, they remain on display for the public to review, to remember, to reflect.