century to come. that, my friends, at least, has not changed in 50 years. [ applause ] you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of people and events that helped document the american story all weekend,

every weekend on c-span3. each week american history tv's american artifacts take americans on the scenes of museums and historic sites. in 1915, a nobleman approached the king of england, demanding that their happenings be written down. king john agreed, finding himself writing the magna carta, including trial by jury, habeus corpus, and no taxation without representation. the 1215 version is still in wales, and that book applied its rights to all english freemen. the charting was later cited leading up to the american revolution. in 2007, co-founder of the

philanthropist, david rubinstein, purchased for $148 one of only 47 original magna cartas and the only copy in the united states. in 1929, rubinstein loaned it to the american people. it was put on display in 1911 to be put in a new protective case. american history tv attended a press hearing for the newly unveiled magna carta. >> i'm david barry of the archivist of the united states and it's nice to welcome you to one of the archivists. for many a year, the only copy of the magna carta has been out of sight, undergoing conservation treatment. we're showing you the result of

our staff's expert pain staking work displayed in a new encasement designed and fabricated by the national institute's standards and technology. the 700-year-old document looks better than ever. when the magna carta is back on public display beginning february 17, it will be a more accurate rendition of the record. people will be able to read it and know what it was all about. the connection between magna carta and the effects of secure liberty and law over the centuries have inspired a new gallery which will be the future home of magna carta. this new permanent exhibit will allow visitors to examine important records of our evolving ideas about who has rights and to see the links between those ideas and the forces that shape our lives

today. the new gallery will be named in honor of david m. rubinstein with whom we're indebted three times over, first in his position to acquire magna carta and to make it acceptable to the american people here at the national archives. second, annual contributions to make this new display possible and to develop our new orientation and exhibit spaces. and third and most heartfelt, for his personal commitment to the preservation, access and understanding of our documentary heritage. this past november, it is my honor to present david with the foundations records of achievement award acknowledging not only the aid he's rendered this organization but his many contributions to the storehouses of our cultural history. david's enthusiasm for using great historic records, his tools for demanding specific understanding is self-evident. we have with us today amelia bundles, who is right here in front of us, who is the new head

of the foundation of the national archives. and now david. dav >> david, thank you very much. david fariel has done an outstanding job, and i want to thank you for the job you're doing in helping to preserve this most important document in our country. when i first heard of the magna carta being for sale, i was surprised it was for sale and i was surprised it was probably in private hands. i was afraid it would probably leave the country, and since it wasn't drafted or written here, it was an important document for years and years because it was drafted before our country came into existence, i thought it was important it be kept in the united states because, as david said, it was t, and i'm very

pleased that people from all over the world now have a chance to see it. it is encased and hopefully will last another 800 years or so. we will be celebrating in three years the 800th anniversary of the original magna carta in 1215 and that will be a lot of ceremonies in the united states and england, and our archives will no longer be on his own. >> i am very honored that they're willing to do so and they've done so with an extraordinary attention to detail and extraordinary lump of this document. so i'm very pleased and honored to be with you today, and i want to thank david and your marta

for being available for everyone to see. this is the hard part. >> very gently. >> i think a nuclear bomb would not be able to destroy this. >> please, please, please. >> so it's now my pleasure to introduce kitty who was the manager of the magna carta preservation and she'll tell us a little about the process. thanks, kitty. >> thank you very much. the document conservation lab of the national archives was really honored and pleased to be asked to be involved in ensuring the long-term preservation of the 1297 rubinstein magna carta.

in taking on this project, we were building on the expertise that we acquired in the recent treatment and encasement of the charters of freedom and being able to apply it to the preservation of another great charter from an earlier era in english history. the project had separate lines of work that came together flawlessly. one was the conservation examination and treatment of this great document, another was the design and fabrication of this really remarkable state of the art encasement that would be filled with inert gas, and the third was the fabric and design of the exhibit case to hold all this and protect it. as i've said, all those strands have come together in just the last week or so, and we're very happy and excited. the conservation goals for this project were to remove old repairs and old adhesives that

were detracting from the document. this is a document on parchment, and just parn thetically, parchment is especially prepared and stretched animal skin. this is not paper, and it's from an era when parchment was a preferred support for very important documents, public laws and things of that nature. so it's totally understandable that it's on parchment and that's partly why it's come down to us in such incredible condition. in our conservation work, two of our senior conserve tors carried out a very conservative examination of the parchment. ink is on which the public seal mentions, but look closely, it was the old repair and the old adhesive. the staircase is up the front and revrs of that document.

we also. it reveals things the naked eye can't see. in this case, when you get to see a little closer, there are some areas where the liquid dripped on it and we can't find the text there. what we found was the ultra ultraviolet light helped preserve it. the old repairs and old adhesives were causing refraction of the parchment. after all those were removed, they got rid of all the farz. we searched paste in areas where

they match the surrounding pampment. if you look at it with the naked eye, actually, it's really a great job and i have some are made but they're less, less object trus sieve that door condition conditioned. once this thing seals in a casement, we wanted it to relax. part of it was preservation of material, so we have every reason to believe that 800 years from now they'll be in fantastic shape just like the document itself and its incredibly clear

ink, which if we could read medieval latin would be perfectly legible. they wrote the requirements for these wonderful encasements as part of a memorandum agreement with the national institutes of technology in discussing the design and details of the design, of this encasement. so it would both protect the penny. look, really excited. we met with engineers to make sure every last possible detail was just right. that led to the design you see here in the encasement today. i'm pleased to introduce you designer j.

>> probably biggest questions, how did. weave and the library of koj. it has some unique challenges. as you can see, the document comes out at you, so it's almost a three dimensional image coming to you that created a lot of design and manufacturing problems to us that we were able to overcome. the design of the basement, i don't know if there are a lot of inherent things that ten years ago would not have been in any encasement found around. we've made this to be able to take a lot of the expected

environmental issues that could occur, even something as simple as changes in bar rometric. . the lighting to make it an absorbing background so you is a anything. in this we had to change our way of thinking to make it somewhat rustic and make it so it did not design any light. >> the design process itself, we followed in the milgd at the docume document. thaet for reefshing document i

knew there was three large components. there is a frim on fm. this is crafted aluminum which is machine down. the bottom of which you see the chamb chamber, the back side of the chamber was created out of an 800-pound block of aluminum all reduced down, which when you remove that much material creates a lot of stresses and makes the machine process very iterative to get to it and maintain a very good ceiling surface. the platform with the custom ceiling that we mentioned, another difficulty was matching the seal on it and be able to suspend the seal so there's no pressure, as kitty had mentioned. the document. that was something until we could physically have it set in there, we had to do some

misdemeanor fictions. ll. fouft because of the ability to explain this, a lot goes into the design of the last material used to give the outer face that the public will see. i'd like to thank some of our partners and some local companies out there. american metal stripping. we needed their process to do in-house and get the finishes that you see on the finished project. i think that's all. >> thank you. >> are there any questions?

>> we were here when you first delivered the magna carta and you talked about your time on capitol hill as a basis of your interest. could you tell that story again, please? >> i worked on capitol hill when i was very young. i was 25 years old. i was the chief council is the senate subcommittee in constitutional amendments, and that comparison, i spent and thought about -- >> that sparked the reason i might be interested in these kinds of things, and in recent years, i brought some other documents that are very porn because they're shortened. really, all these documents are described by the people said the magna carta.

and i . >> for those of you unfamiliar with the magna carta, could someone please give us a tag na cart a 101 in june 15 of -- well, 15. noblemen came together with lick they were, the principals that the noblemen had asked him to grow groo it and it should be proportionate to the crime involved. it was written in medieval latin. unfortunately, one of the principals, according to king john's view of it, would result in i am being excommune

indicated. the president was really subordinate to the public, because a bunch of people would dom over. i his ults. he came up with a new version and that kept the peace for a while. when king edward died, his son, king john, became the king. they asked him to agree on a new mag na tart a, and they might

they said it may become the king of england. the 2015 version was ab ro garo and while this version has so many issues, that's why it's so important. >> is that -- >> well, theets very goot. >> what the magna carta, he have a about -- government is based on no taxation without representation, representation of government. we have the right to habeus corp corpus, we have a punishment proportion for the crime, trial by jury. things like that are the inspiration for our bill of rights. but if you read the early writings of hamilton and jefferson and adams and madison,

many times they say it's because of the magna carta that we're doing this. and remember, these people who were breaking away from england, they viewed themselves as englishman. they said, we're not breaking away from england, we're englishman. we're entitled to them. and king edward said, no, you're really not entitled to the magna rights. they were not rights that the parliament and the king really wanted to give to people who were then living in the colonies. so it was really magna carta site and they should have an interest. you wonder if kids will see this and get an impression on it? >> i think every kid in the eighth grade in the united

states is brought here march or april of their eighth grade year. i was brought here. i did come to see the archives and other buildings in washington, and i don't know if in the releaseses of my mind, you're very happy to come back here now, but yes, i did come here as a young boy. >> you talked about other areas, recently monuments. what is a backstop for when things go wrong and you have no cash? >> there are other people that have many resources, and i'm sure the federal government a has a lot more than i to give, but if i find something interesting and i'm able to give, i'm most happy to do so. the most proud thing i've done is at the archives. at archives have moved forward a

lot more than before to make sure that the archives is most pleegsd that i'm involved with. >> what happened after that? >> everybody in life has surges. as an owner of them, i am responsible for the insurance on them, i'm responsible for the expense of casement, but you can't bury these documents, as far as i know. i'm assuming the appropriate place will be found when i am not on this earth. zds do you have.

and then we'll take you up for a tour and learn more about the documents. >> what's your name. >> my name is marvin pink either, which is appear. . and that will be the home for the mag. what's really interest is that whooef created this enter. >> let me somehow tree doning

through the roolts see if it's detailed. see there's a section of the magna carta which appears to the naked eye to be white, but when we put it under an you wiult rr light, we were able to reveal the text is still in the document. for the first part, you can read it in english in its entirety. you can also look at the held days of national law. here in the language of the document itself, in transition, no mae man is to be taken or kbrord the, of his liberties i

woi. all the provisions would come and people with property, whereas the bill of rights was a document intended to cover a much larger swath of the population. we showed some examples of the influence of magna carta on american life, the way it was used as an emblem of the rights of englishmen in our early history. here we have a patriot ingrate by paul revere holding magna carta. another example is john dickinson's "the patriotic american farmer" and his elbow rests on magna carta. but it also continues later in our history, what you're looking at is franklin roosevelt's third inaugural draeaddress. and the detail here says the

democratic aspiration is no longer in ancient history. it blazed anew in the middle an ages. it was written in the magna carta. so as far back as 1892, he is still fighting back in the magna carta. so we think this interactive device is going to give us a lot more strength to the display of magna carta. allow our players just to have a deeper understanding, but how it connects to our charters. >> you can watch american artifacts and other american history tv programs any time by visiting our web site,

cspan.org/history. >> you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. for more information, follow us on twitter at cspan history. the governor is getting ready to reveal his budget for the next year, a budget $900 million in the red. it's mostly cloudy and 7 degrees at the airport. you're listening to shreveport news and weather station. next weekend, book tv and american history tv explore the history and literary culture of shreveport, louisiana. saturday starting at noon eastern on book tv on cspan 2, dr. gary joiner.

and then a look at the over 200,000 books of a john smith nobel collection at the lsu shreveport archives. on american history tv on cspan 3 sunday at 5:00 p.m. eastern from barksdale air force base. also visit the pioneer heritage center, medical treatment and medicine during the civil war. shreveport, louisiana next weekend on cspan 2 and 3. >> this particular phone only rings in a serious crisis. keep it in the hands of a man who has proven himself responsible. look for president johnson on november 3. >>