每日英語跟讀 Ep.K327: How European Royals Once Shared Their Most Important Secrets

To safeguard the most important royal correspondence against snoops and spies in the 16th century, writers employed a complicated means of security. They’d fold the letter, then cut a dangling strip, using that as an improvised thread to sew stitches that locked the letter and turned the flat writing paper into its own envelope. To get inside, a spy would have to snip the lock open, an act impossible to go undetected.

為了保護16世紀最重要的皇家信件免受窺探和 間諜的侵害，作家們採用了一種複雜的安全手段 。他們會摺疊這封信，然後剪下一條懸空的條帶，用它 作為即興的線縫合縫合線，鎖住這封信， 把扁平的書寫紙變成自己的信封。要進入內部， 間諜必須將鎖剪開，這是不可能 不被發現的行為。

Catherine de’ Medici used the method in 1570 — a time she governed France while her ill son, King Charles IX, sat on its throne. Queen Elizabeth I did so in 1573 as the sovereign ruler of England and Ireland. And Mary Queen of Scots used it in 1587 just hours before her long effort to unite Britain ended in her beheading.

凱薩琳·德·美第奇在1570年使用了這種方法——當時她統治法國，而她生病的兒子查理九世坐在王位上。伊莉莎白一世女王於1573年作為英格蘭和愛爾蘭的主權統治者這樣做。蘇格蘭的瑪麗女王在1587年使用了它，就在她長期團結英國的努力以斬首告終之前的幾個小時。

“These people knew more than one way to send a letter, and they chose this one,” said Jana Dambrogio, lead author of a study that details Renaissance-era politicians’ use of the technique, and a conservator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries. “You had to be highly confident to make a spiral lock. If you made a mistake, you’d have to start all over, which could take hours of rewriting and restitching. It’s fascinating. They took great pains to build up their security.”

"這些人知道不止一種寄信的方式，他們選擇了 這種方式，"Jana Dambrogio說，她是一項研究的主要作者，該研究詳細介紹了 文藝復興時期政治家對該技術的使用，也是 麻省理工學院圖書館的保護員。"你必須 非常自信才能做出螺旋鎖。如果你犯了一個錯誤，你必須 從頭開始，這可能需要幾個小時的重寫和 重新拼接。這真是令人著迷。他們煞費苦心地建立了自己的安全機制。

Disclosure of the method’s wide use among European royalty is the latest venture of a group of scholars, centered at MIT, into a vanished art they call letterlocking — an early form of communications security that they’re busy resurrecting. Early last year, they reported their development of a virtual-reality technique that let them peer into locked letters without tearing them apart and damaging the historical record.

揭露該方法在歐洲皇室中的廣泛使用是 一群以麻省理工學院為中心的學者的最新冒險， 他們稱之為字母鎖定 - 一種他們忙於復活的早期通信安全形式 。去年年初，他們報告了他們 開發的一種虛擬現實技術，這種技術可以讓他們窺視鎖定 的信件，而不會撕裂它們並破壞歷史記錄。

Now, in a detailed article that appeared last December in the Electronic British Library Journal, the scholars lay out their expanding universe of discoveries and questions. They showcase instances of spiral letterlocking among the queens and posit that the method “spread across European courts through royal correspondence.”

在去年12月發表在《電子大英圖書館雜誌》（Electronic British Library Journal）上的一篇詳細文章中，學者們列出了他們不斷擴大的發現和問題。他們展示了女王之間螺旋式字母鎖定的例子，並假設這種方法"通過皇室信件傳播到整個歐洲宮廷"。

Although the use of locked letters faded in the 1830s with the emergence of mass-produced envelopes and improved systems of mail delivery, it’s now seen as a fascinating precursor to the widespread encryption used globally in electronic communications.

雖然鎖定信件的使用在19世紀30年代隨著大規模生產的信封和郵件傳遞系統的改進而逐漸消失，但它現在被視為全球電子通信中廣泛使用的加密的迷人先驅。Source article: https://udn.com/news/story/6904/6092287