Every one of these was, for a while, impossible to read. A scroll cooked solid by Vesuvius, a film nobody had sat through in a century, a love letter that has to be unfolded before it makes any sense, software written for a machine that no longer exists. None of them survived by being carefully preserved — they survived because somebody found a way back in.
A 2,000-year-old scroll read in full without ever being opened
→ scrollprize.org
The first film adaptation of Homer's epic — a surviving Italian silent, free to watch
→ openculture.com
A 1913 love letter that unfolds into a tiny paper art gallery
→ aaa.si.edu