DARPA: Reconstruct Shredded Docs, Win $50K USD 209
ematic writes with a link to an interesting competition from DARPA: "The ability to reconstruct shredded documents will potentially yield information that may save lives or offer critical information about an adversary's plans. Currently, this process is much too slow and too labor-intensive, particularly if the documents are handwritten. We are looking to the Shredder Challenge to generate some leap-ahead thinking in this area. The Shredder Challenge is composed of five separate problems. The overall prize awarded depends on the number and difficulty of problems solved."
Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den (Score:4, Interesting)
shredderchallenge seems to be Slashdotted, so apologies if this is a dup.
During the Iran Hostage Crisis [wikipedia.org] teams of carpet weavers were recruited to piece together [gwu.edu] shredded documents. They were then published in 1982 in 54 volumes under the title "Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den" [archive.org].