Dating Paper

Passive examination is generally the best and easiest thing to try first. By passive I mean examining the document and checking for a date or time-period specific references before resorting to other methods such as document media (eg-paper) or print (eg-ink) examination/chemical breakdown.

Other passive examination techniques include asking relevant experts/libraries/historical foundations, etc regarding the historical document or consulting online databases and search engines based on the content of said historical document. Yes even a carefully-worded internet search may give you the quick answer!

The type of more hands-on and potentially damaging examination methods will depend on a number of factors. What works well for 18 century paper manuscripts may not work well for documents written on animal skin, etc.

What type of documents?

What approximate age and condition?

Can you remove pieces for physical/chemical analysis?

etc....

There is no method specific to the ink or typed script.

Experts in the area would proceed as follows;

To check if the document bear impression of hand writing from some other document of known age.

To examin the paper since letterheads and watermarks will be modified time to time as well as the specimens of such paper from the appropriate time can give clue.

Is this document written or printed? Is it on paper or parchment?

Is the parchment new?

early printed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incunable

Carbon dating may have an application if you can consume some of it, if worth it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiocarbon_dating_calibration.svg

Dear Escape, Make your enquiry to the Library of Congress, since they have one of the largest collections of historical documents in the world, and the most knowledgable experts. All my old books are written on linen paper or vellum, and there are special water marks that tell you who made the paper. My oldest book is 1707, and you can tell by the raised type how the letters were pressed in type block, not to mention the use of middle English. If it is a true historical document or a fake is left to the experts. Try contacting at least two or three antiquarian booksellers in your area as to the authenticity of the document. Any sort of paper or ink analysis will be asked for by someone who knows what they are doing. Someone at the Library of Congress will know. Good luck, Bike Master (Formally Historian and Genealogist for the IHC)

they can do carbon testing, but some counterfeiters would go into achieves and obtain pieces of actual dated historical papers, tear pieces from them burn it and mix it with ink to counterfeit papers, to give a false test of the counterfeits.

Don't ask how they obtain access to the actual documents....

Yes, very old wood has been used by counterfeiters to make very old furniture that is 'authentic'

They even use period tools

thats a little different,

not on the subject, and off topic. there are loggers that are retrieving logs from Lake Superior that were cut from 100 + years ago., where the logs broke through the ice during transport, or ship sinking, became water logged and sank.

When I was a kid, 40 + years ago, the old timers back then would be talking to my dad at the kitchen table.

They would tell how people would cross the bay of Green Bay when it freezes over with horses to take logs to Marinette, Wisconsin on bobsleds. The over loaded bobsled would break through the ice and the teamsters could not unhook the horses because of the tension on the tugs. And now the bob sled that that the team was pulling, was now was pulling the team under the ice.

As a 8 yo old, I pictured this scene of big draft horses, steam rolling out their flared nostrils and rolling off their hides and literally pulling for their lives, as the bobsled pulls them under the ice.

p911

I was just wanting to know for informations sake. I am in the process of writing a book and just want to be as authentic as possible. thanks for all the answers.

SEM/X-ray Florescence spectroscopy/Auger analysis would tie down the chemistry of the ink and paper and help not only date it but possibly trace it's movements through time by looking at the trace elements and pollen and dust that the paper has picked up over the years. I don't think it would be able to sort the carbon 12/13/14 fractions that way, but it might. Certainly carbon dating would be able to but carbon dating can be thrown off by contamination with carbon as has been noted previously. Since it looks at the ratio of C14 to other isotopes of carbon, and not the true amount of carbon, a document can be made to seem older by contaminating it with pure C12/13 to throw the ratio off. This however is where SEM analysis may be able to help, by identifying surface contamination of the paper. if it is modern paper, there is a good chance that the manufacturer can be identified this way as well. the FBI keeps a very in-depth database of paper, ink and typewriter data for use in identifying forgeries.

If the author of the document is known (or suspected) and there are other exemplars of that person's hand writing (I'm assuming it is hand written and not typewritten.) then handwriting analysis will help to verify the authorship. if it is typewritten, then microscopic examination of the type will help identify not only the model of typewriter, but possibly to the specific typewriter if other exemplars that would have been produced on the machine are still in existence. Good handwriting experts can note subtle marks that can show whether the handwriting is forged.