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Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#11

Post by posterguy »

musicale wrote: post #6

It might be nice for people to be able to actually read the documents in the National Archives rather than relying on a transcription or a mobile app. I wonder if they've considered making a simple tutorial on how to read cursive? It's not that hard if you can already read printed English. And of course you can practice on documents in the National Archives. It's exciting and fun to learn to read an unfamiliar script…

i dont think the problem is the lack of resources to learn how to read and write cursive

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#12

Post by sayrer »

Over2Chars wrote: post #3

It says "The following is the dedication of James Lambert a soldier of the Revolutionary wars with the Americas." blah blah blah

Yes, that seems right. Not that difficult. This one suffers from some poor penmanship, though.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#13

Post by Unearned5161 »

Over2Chars wrote: post #3

It says "The following is the dedication of James Lambert a soldier of the Revolutionary wars with the Americas." blah blah blah

I'm not too sure about that reading, I got "The following is the declaration of James Lambert a soldier of the Revolutionary War in South America." rather different

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#14

Post by ternaryoperator »

musicale wrote: post #6

It might be nice for people to be able to actually read the documents in the National Archives rather than relying on a transcription or a mobile app. I wonder if they've considered making a simple tutorial on how to read cursive? It's not that hard if you can already read printed English. And of course you can practice on documents in the National Archives. It's exciting and fun to learn to read an unfamiliar script…

I think it likely that reading the great variety of cursive styles makes simple teaching rather complicated. Folks who spent years in school reading and writing in cursive can quickly adapt to the various styles, in a way that I'm not sure it could be done in a simple tutorial.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#16

Post by jez »

The handwriting in some of these snippets, while sometimes difficult to read for one reason or another, is nonetheless beautiful: did everyone who wrote have such great handwriting back then?

I'm looking at the piece in the Instagram post linked by the page, which begins, "honor of holding in their service". The lines are so straight, the letters are so uniform!

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#17

Post by jonahx »

iambateman wrote: post #7

This is all very cool so I’m not trying to be dismissive. In a lot of ways, giving a hobby out as a way to participate in the national archives is an end in itself. But…computers can definitely do this way better, right?

I had the same thought but maybe on old hand writing they can't?

EDIT:

I tried giving the sample to 4o and it gave:

The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America.

The said James Lambert this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the State of Indiana and at the November Term of said Court (1841), it being a court of record created by the laws of Indiana and made oath that:

On the 25th day of March 1842, he will be eighty-five years old, that he was born in the State of Maryland, that he is now a resident of said county and has been for the 27 years last past; that he has lived in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania...

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#18

Post by jb1991 »

posterguy wrote: post #11
musicale wrote: post #6

It might be nice for people to be able to actually read the documents in the National Archives rather than relying on a transcription or a mobile app. I wonder if they've considered making a simple tutorial on how to read cursive? It's not that hard if you can already read printed English. And of course you can practice on documents in the National Archives. It's exciting and fun to learn to read an unfamiliar script…

i dont think the problem is the lack of resources to learn how to read and write cursive

Except that it does say that in the article, that’s it's a lack of education in reading cursive.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#19

Post by tptacek »

Isn't this like a bread-and-butter AI task?

“The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America.” “The said James Lambert, on this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the State of Indiana, at the November Term of said Court [1841], it being a court of record created by the laws of Indiana, and made oath that on the 25th day of March 1842 he will be eighty‐five years old; that he was born in the State of Maryland; that he is now a resident of [said] county and has been for the [27] years last past; that he has lived in Virginia, Maryland, [and Pennsylvania]; that…”

These kinds of problems, matching up cursive to actual text, would seem to play to the absolute best strengths of an LLM, given how much basic language structure the models encode.

Re: Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

#20

Post by saagarjha »

Seems like something that some of those big AI companies that are desperately starved of training material could chip in on, no? Actually do something for the public good, spend a few cents of that VC money, get some high-quality training data out of it?
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