
Reading Hard-to-Read Gravestones (2014) - vinnyglennon
https://organizeyourfamilyhistory.com/reading-hard-read-gravestones/
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jonsully
While straight digital manipulation may not work as well (colors/contrast
based) - those with newer phones can use the 3d depth sensors to do this
without any extra tools May have to turn your phone around so the face / depth
sensors face the stone, but I just tried this with Scandy (free tool) and it
totally works. Pretty cool!

Scandy: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scandy-
pro-3d-scanner/id138802...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scandy-
pro-3d-scanner/id1388028223)

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saul_goodman
If you want to do this optically just shoot a flashlight across the surface of
the stone, hills and valleys of even less than 1mm in height or depth will
create shadows revealing most of the otherwise hidden text. But hey, I bet we
can get a startup to do this with a only a few million in round A seed money.

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SCUSKU
Love it, very clever and neat trick that I'll hopefully remember should I
encounter this problem.

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raverbashing
Something people could try with a cellphone, some image processing sw and a
cloudy day is to video the gravestone while spinning a light around it to
capture the relief

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api
This being HN I'm surprised someone hasn't tried to train a neural net to read
hard to read gravestones and made an app.

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jansan
There are really clever applications for aluminium foil that I never thought
about. Here it is used to prevent sticking of hot plastic to existing parts of
a model:

[https://youtu.be/6hW_FbsEG4A?t=446](https://youtu.be/6hW_FbsEG4A?t=446)

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mdturnerphys
For those new to geneology,
[https://www.findagrave.com/](https://www.findagrave.com/) is a great resource
for finding grave locations and viewing photos of tombstones.

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sinuhe69
A clever approach. I thought a bit of digital manipulation would solve the
problem but after a few tries, it turned out not so simple, though.

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lmm
You can't read these things head-on because the information is in the depth.
Looking at them obliquely helps a lot. If you want a fancy (and non-intrusive)
technological approach then 3D laser scanning is probably the way to go.

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smabie
Could the iPhone depth sensor be used for this purpose? Could an app be made?

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wodenokoto
The current top comment on this post claims that you can in fact do that.

Poster only links to an app for depth scanning, but it would be really cool if
somebody with an iPhone near a grave yard would jump out and share some scans
with us :)

(Obviously I’m too lazy)

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devaler
Forgive my ignorance, but would an ipad pro with lidar have sufficient
technology to produce a readable facsimile?

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amatecha
I think another approach would be a piece of paper and a crayon or such. I'd
be reluctant to carry around a bunch of aluminum foil for this purpose, but
paper and crayons feels a bit less wasteful to me. I imagine the environmental
cost would be less (though I could be wrong about that)

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interestica
From the article:

>The downside is that, unlike gravestone rubbings–which I learned are harmful
to the gravestone–it’s not easy to keep and store foil rubbings.

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eru
Of course, you can take a picture of the foil rubbing.

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082349872349872
If one thinks it might be nice to leave a transcription for the next people
who wonder about the stone, try something like:

[https://www.nationalband.com/2702-write-on-
tag/](https://www.nationalband.com/2702-write-on-tag/)

