At the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, some of the world’s most intriguing and ingenious gadgets can be found. Here are just a few…
An unassuming lump of explosive coal was issued with its own dinky camouflage kit so that spies could colourmatch it to local coal.
America’s dog poo homing beacon directed planes to missile strikes in the 1970s. It doesn’t look very convincing, truth be told, but who’s going to be staring that intently at it, really?
The trees have ears! During the Cold War, a solar-powered tree stump listening device was placed near a Soviet airbase to eavesdrop for the CIA.
Pigeons are the world’s most decorated birds, and for good reason – 95% of wartime pigeons successfully completed their missions. Some even wore a tiny camera to spy on the enemy.
The KGB’s lipstick pistol could dispense the kiss of death in a flash. Not one to be fished out of a make-up bag by mistake on a bleary morning, though.
Closer to home, the Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick has a rather nifty deception device of its own. In 1942, Charles Fraser-Smith – the man who inspired Ian Fleming’s character of Q – asked the Cumberland Pencil Factory to design a special hollowed-out pencil that could house a secret map, to be given to Lancaster Bomber pilots. A compass was hidden under the rubber, something we’d be bound to lose within about three minutes.
These gadgets were collated for our Looking Back feature on spies from our January issue. Read all about some of the world’s most famous spies (and their gadgets) from page 84.
