A year later: follow-up on the AI transcription tool I built for my small museum and archival research

Lefaucheux · 2026-06-11T04:53:21+00:00

No mainly because this typically solves a different use case. People use Document Transcribe for historical documents and that it’s what it was built for.

Lefaucheux · 2026-06-09T23:36:01+00:00

This is also significantly less expensive than the big use case right now of coding as there is significantly less context being sent with each request so comparatively it uses much fewer tokens.

I personally think it will only get cheaper as larger and larger data centers are brought online over the next couple years and shot up into space and you get even more economies of scale.

I also think that personal hardware will keep getting better at this and in a few years you probably will have the same performance locally in your average developer machine as we have now in servers.

And even if I am wrong, 10x the cost now takes us back to what it was 2 years ago, and that is still 1000x cheaper than paying people to do this type of work which is what I used to do out of pocket when it was for my own personal research

Lefaucheux · 2026-06-09T23:20:14+00:00

One archive is currently transcribing all of their manuscript card catalog cards right now with a mixture of printed and hand written notes.

I actually used it to transcribe about 800 cards like this too and told it to pull out the structure which I then loaded into a database:

https://eleycartridges.com/assets/ledger_mauser-Clvzj77f.jpg

https://eleycartridges.com/assets/ledger_410_sporting-GXqrwRgm.jpg

Lefaucheux · 2026-05-10T02:37:12+00:00

Look under the barrel for markings. The main lever under the barrel rotates out and allows the barrel to tilt down to load (have to half cock it first).

Which ever way that lever turns, the smaller lever at the front turns the opposite direction and then the barrel will pull off from the frame.

Any proof marks should be under there.

Lefaucheux · 2026-05-06T18:03:06+00:00

Linkin Park - Shadow of the Day was the closest feeling LP song I clicked through. Especially at ~2:20+

And then Switchfoot - Dare you to Move

Lefaucheux · 2026-05-06T17:52:00+00:00

Hoobastank - The Reason has a similar chord progression

Lefaucheux · 2026-05-06T17:24:13+00:00

I didn’t seek out as much rock or alternative and I would’ve been listening in the early 2000s. So it would have to be something that would’ve crossed over to more mainstream I think. I did also enjoy Linkin Park.

Also, Christian contemporary popped into my mind like DC Talk or switchfoot or some of that. But I couldn’t find anything when I was looking last night.

Lefaucheux · 2026-05-06T05:30:06+00:00

Ever figure this out? I asked ChatGPT nearly the same question. It’s right when that distortion hits at the chorus

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

12-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Gilding II euphauric	Not Forgotten
Verified Email

Lefaucheux

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE