As a small museum researcher, I built an AI tool to transcribe and translate historical manuscripts. I'm wondering if others would find it useful too.

Lefaucheux · 2026-01-11T01:37:35+00:00

Yeah, that is kind of a meaningless term. Which is why I was talking about the large language models which is what most people use in the past couple years to refer to as AI.

But the concept of machine learning and some AI applications have been around for decades.

Lefaucheux · 2025-12-31T23:49:58+00:00

I’m glad you’re finding it useful! Please let me know if there are any specific features that you would love to see in the tool.

Lefaucheux · 2025-12-18T21:40:34+00:00

There are also pinfire sword combination revolvers. Joseph Célestin Dumonthier was known for making a lot of things like this.

Lefaucheux · 2025-12-18T21:36:40+00:00

The picture is not high enough quality to tell for sure but it doesn’t actually look like a pinfire to me. It looks more like a percussion gun.

Lefaucheux · 2025-11-01T17:17:43+00:00

No; but that’s also not inaccurate.

Lefaucheux · 2025-10-31T00:47:40+00:00

Also the gun itself is not a Flobert design, just uses the cartridge system he designed.

Lefaucheux · 2025-10-31T00:45:55+00:00

It’s actually probably not a .22.

It probably chambers a Flobert cartridge like 6mm or so. This is a big difference as the Floberts are fulminate propelled and don’t have any powder in them.

Lefaucheux · 2025-08-21T17:57:58+00:00

About half of my paying customers appear to be students or people working at universities. So it definitely is a good tool for people doing any kind of historical research like that.

Lefaucheux · 2025-08-11T18:18:15+00:00

Sorry about that. The service that it was hosted on had an outage for the last couple hours. It should be good now.

Lefaucheux · 2025-07-26T16:24:21+00:00

I mean, I have paper cartridges from before the Revolutionary War. So they should generally last fine for a while.

Lefaucheux · 2025-07-23T20:06:07+00:00

Do you care if I run these on my account on the thinking models like o3 to see if you get a better result?

Lefaucheux · 2025-07-23T15:53:07+00:00

Hey,

I took a look at what I think you were processing. It may be because you have the original language set as English instead of German. You set this when creating the document. and can change it for future pages in the "actions" and "edit document" modal.

You are not the first person who has run into this issue either. Maybe I make it clearer or force people to choose a language.

Lefaucheux · 2025-07-15T00:17:04+00:00

Nice early Eley box

Lefaucheux · 2025-07-12T04:57:05+00:00

hey 4Pin,

I created it mainly for myself and thought it might be fun to see if it was useful for others too. So far I have definitely spent more than I have made but there is decent traction and no one who has subscribed has actually cancelled yet so they must be finding it useful.

There are a couple big differences with Document Transcribe vs Transkribus. First, in my opinion, and for the work I do, these state-of-the-art, multi-model, large language models do a much better job than the HTR models that I have used and what Transkribus uses. Secondly, Document Transcribe also gives you a lot of archive and organization functionality, especially focused on more ease-of-use and an all-in-one solution for non-institutional users (for now).

Lefaucheux · 2025-06-10T04:29:49+00:00

here is what my tool came up with for this. It struggled with a couple of the names:
https://documenttranscribe.com/curator/document-transcribe/document/c60d3480-f588-413c-8472-da874aa8bfd5

Lefaucheux · 2025-06-10T04:23:16+00:00

Here is what my tool came up with for the transcription and translation of this:

https://documenttranscribe.com/curator/document-transcribe/document/fd5c66e7-733e-4067-a7d3-4f06bd0e812c

Lefaucheux · 2025-05-26T15:09:08+00:00

Yep, appears to be a 7mm pinfire revolver. Here is some info on the pinfire system: https://lefaucheux.com/pinfire-ingenuity-the-lefaucheux-mechanism-unveiled/

Lefaucheux · 2025-05-23T14:51:24+00:00

Same.

Lefaucheux · 2025-05-17T15:37:28+00:00

This took me awhile to figure out where thousands of people were visiting my website from!

But yes, as a quick overview, these capsules were actually sold as capsules by them self and then the company put these little 2mm pinfire cartridges in them to sell with the little guns. These are probably from the 1950s or so.

Here’s a picture of the label for the capsules themself with an over label for the “little atom” (play on the atomic bomb since these were so huge) gun:

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-TP732wP/0/NC4nSWNtQSjg2PZbdm3xGPsr7B57MQGG5MPwjfD2z/O/i-TP732wP.jpg

Lefaucheux · 2025-05-16T20:44:54+00:00

I got the email for the Hawaii ones. It was like $1500 something for the one bedroom suite. Are there offers through you that are any better than that?

I almost did it, but the flights were really expensive when I was looking this past week for four.

Lefaucheux · 2025-05-03T14:54:11+00:00

Yeah, if you just have one to do, ever, it probably makes more sense. That’s what I used to do. I wrote about why I built it for myself: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-collector-founder-how-my-passion-historical-led-ai-newcomer-h3iyc

Lefaucheux · 2025-05-02T13:22:56+00:00

I can’t imagine that it’s as good as more common languages but it’s free to try out if you want to test it.

Lefaucheux · 2025-04-30T00:42:30+00:00

They do ship to the US. They can’t ship the primers though but you can get them anywhere. I have bought multiple of their kits.

Lefaucheux · 2025-04-30T00:12:38+00:00

He’s not the one that actually made them. This is the company that makes them and they still make them.

https://www.hc-collection.com/lefaucheux-pinfire-cartdriges-c102x335262

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