Historical Research LLC Authentications

[Dolf]

Guys,

Dolf makes an interesting point regarding the value of a documented award. Unfortunately even the documents can be forged. To be 100% sure of authenticity, a form of data encryption could be used in either the document or in the form of an electronic "appraisal". An example of the later might consist of physically looking at the award, determining it's authenticity, then utilizing Public Key Encryption to generate a unique key held only by the appraiser. The public key could be included on a CD with the scanned authentication document. The shortcoming there is the potential to make duplicates of the CD and of the award, thus creating "authentic" forgeries. What would need to be done to retain 100% security is a microscopic biometric (perhaps I'm being redundant there) mapping of key points on the award to essentially marry the award to the data key. An expensive solution to the problem unfortunately.

Art,

Thanks a lot for helping an ignorant about these things like me to understand what could be a technical solution for the problem, and at the same time realize how expensive that could also be! Wow! :yow

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, and as long as I'll be the owner of my collection, the word of a man like Alexei worths one thousand of these XXIst century technologies, and I guess the financial costs of such an operation as you describe above make it worth even more

Dolf