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The Chinese Diary Collection contains 850 volumes of hardbound and softbound diaries, dating from 1930s to 1980s. Some volumes are filled with writing from cover to cover; some, partially filled; and some, with brief inscriptions. It includes 81 volumes by different individuals of Republican Period (1912-1949) and 95 small volumes penned by an engineer, with scientific data and personal contents. The contents recorded in the dairies are significant, for instance, a set of 20 work diaries by a mid-rank public security cadre member during and after the Cultural Revolution offers detailed history of public security operations for two decades. A set of 10 work diaries by an officer working in a ministry of the State Council in the 1980s documented the political and daily lives before and after the Tiananmen Massacre in association with the students' pro-democracy movement.

Hecht's correspondence with other scientists, articles, lectures, notebooks, and laboratory notes and reports on the mechanics of vision and adaptation to light. The correspondence is primarily with William J. Crozier, Otto Glaser, Jacinto Steinhardt, George Wald, and Ernst Wolf. The notebooks cover the period from 1914-1925.