Scribble Remover May Reveal Lost Dickens Work

We could soon have some "new" Charles Dickens to peruse. Researchers are preparing to pore through the manuscripts of Dickens' novels using a device that reveals what the author crossed out, the Independent reports. That allows scholars to experience the novelist "almost thinking aloud on to paper," says a museum curator. They've already used the process on his story The Chimes, but there's much more to explore.

"We're talking of tens of thousands of manuscript pages that could potentially be unlocked," says the head of the Charles Dickens Museum in London. The device uses an electrically-lit, 1 mm-thick sheet that illuminates a manuscript page. After a photograph is snapped, a computer "removes" the top layer to reveal the hidden text, the Telegraph reports. (More Charles Dickens stories.)