Here are a few of the coolest and best spy tools throughout history!
10 - Monopoly While Monopoly is traditionally thought of
as an excruciatingly boring game that often pits family members against one another, it’s
actually served a much greater purpose.
Soon after the game was created in 1934, the world went to wore again.
The Germans, believe it or not, allowed the Red Cross to bring in humanitarian aid to
their prisoners.
This included games.
So the Allies, or more specifically, M19, created escape kits concealed within Monopoly
games.
What looked like playing pieces were actually compasses and files.
Real money was hidden under the fake money and maps were placed inside the board game
itself.
According to The Atlantic, M19 chose Monopoly, because their U.K manufacturer, John Waddington,
had mastered a technology that allowed them to print using silk.
This provided a huge strategic advantage because silk is much more durable than paper, and
doesn’t make any noise when being folded or used.
Soldiers were instructed to look for monopoly board games in their care packages in the
event that they were captured and to destroy the games once the material were extracted.
By some estimates, thousands of allied soldiers escaped using this method.
9 - Welrod MK2 Variant This is the sort of thing you see in spy films.
This variant of the Welrod MK 2 was essentially a bun up someone’s sleeves.
I’m sure you guys can figure out why someone would want something like this!
While it looked rather innocent, like a flashlight maybe, the MK2 could be deadly from up to
a few yards.
Which is pretty much enough for a trained agent.
But most of the time, the agent would get next to the target, quietly slide the MK2
out of his sleeve and boom…...game over for someone.
Not only was the MK2 sleek and easy to conceal, it was quiet.
That meant a spy could do his deed and nonchalantly leave before people realized what had happened.
And as the name suggests, the MK2 was the second model.
It was an improvement from the MK I in that it didn’t need to be cocked before use,
so it was easier to use.
According to the UK’s National Archives, these weapons were a game changer back during
WWII.
While Germany was invading all over Europe, Britain set up the Special Operation Executive.
These guys’ jobs were to go into occupied territory, spread propaganda and generally
wreak havoc, such as blowing up railways and disposing of important enemy targets.
The MK II was a big help with the latter!
8- Sedgley Glove Bun The Sedgley Glove Bun is quite literally a
hand Bun.
Designed for the U.S Navy, this bad boy fit onto a glove, which could easily be concealed
by a long sleeve.
It would fire a bullet whoever’s wear it would throw a punch!
In theory, upon impact, a single shot would be fired.
As cool as that sounds, reloading was a complicated process.
It meant that rotating the barrel upward, ejecting the empty round, placing a new one
in there, and then doing the whole balling of the fist and punching the guy again.
In other words, you gotta make that first shot count.
With that in mind, only a “handful” of these buns were issued.
Ha, get it?!?!
Okay, okay, bad jokes aside, anywhere from 50 to a couple hundred of these were “handed”
out and there’s no official record this thing putting away anyone for good.
However, that doesn’t mean it never happened though!
7 - Playing Card Maps In a lot of old war movies, it seems like
there was always people playing card games to pass the time.
Apparently this was a pretty common thing.
In fact, during World Wore II, Bicycle playing cards joined forces with U.S and British Intelligence
agencies to create a special kind of playing card.
These cards, when wet, would peel apart and reveal escape routes to Allied Lines.
Remember what I said earlier, the Red Cross could distribute games.
So POWs would get these cards in their annual Christmas packages.
Once put out in order, the cards would reveal a path to safety, based on intelligence gathered
by the Allies.
Since playing cards were such a normal thing, Germans thought nothing of it.
According to Business Insider, this method helped at least 32 people escape, and possibly
more.
No one really knows how many of these decks were made, since the intel surrounding all
of this has been closely guarded, even after all this time.
6 - Letter Removal Device You guys ever have parents that would just
open up your letters and packages as if it was theirs, when it was clearly addressed
to you?!
No?
Well, maybe that was just me!
Well, I wish my parent’s at least would have used this nifty tool to spy on me to
save all the arguing back and forth!
Obviously, when you’re spying on someone, you don’t want them to find out.
So if you need want to read letters not intended for you, of course it’d be great to open
letters without breaking the envelope.
Well the CIA figured that one out!
During World Wore II, they came up with this cool device.
Using something that more or less works like a pincer, they found a way to stick the device
into the unsealed part of the envelope and roll up the letter up and pull it out.
After they get whatever information was on there, they put it back, and the other guys
would apparently have no clue that it’s been intercepted a la Ed Reed!
While it wasn’t exactly the most high tech device known to mankind, it was still extremely
practical.
5 - Keylogger While there was a time when spying meant a
lot of secret meetings, secret codes, tan trench coats, and secret drop offs.
Okay, maybe that does still happen today.
However, now that we live in the digital age, and there’s all kinds of spyware and software
programs that people can do spy stuff with.
Take a keylogger, for instance, no matter how outdated it may seem now.
To be honest, I can still see someone using something like this on their coworker’s
computer!
Short for Keystroke logger, this thing monitors every keystroke on a computer.
I can see parents using this thing to make sure their kids aren’t being weirdly solicited
online.
However, back when these things first came out, spies used it to figure out important
information.
I’d imagine these keyloggers were pretty hard to detect back in those days.
I mean, who’s always checking to make sure there isn’t always something extra plugged
in between their keyboard and computer?!
4 - Charlie the Robotic Catfish Thanks to MTV, we usually think of something
else when we hear the term catfish.
But believe it or not the CIA used an actual robotic catfish named Charlie to gather intelligence.
Yep.
The most advanced intelligence agency on the planet once used this in their official duties.
Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s, the CIA conjured up a plot to make a robotic catfish
that could swim up to a target and record information.
According to the CIA’s website, the goal of Charlie was to study quote “the feasibility
of unmanned underwater vehicles and other aquatic robot technologies for intelligence
collection purposes.”
Whew say that 5 times fast!
Anyways, Charlie was also used to collect water samples without being detected.
Charlie was decked out with some pretty cutting edge technology.
Charlie was armed with a pressure hull, communication system, and ballast system in the body plus
a propeller in the tail.
All of this made Charlie fast, easy to maneuver, and easy to navigate.
While the EXACT use of Charlie is unclear, the New York Times reported that experts theorized
it could have been used to collect water samples near nuclear and chemical plants, among other
things.
3 - Pigeons For thousands of years now, pigeons have been
a bird of war in varying degrees.
In the 6th century B.C, they were used by the King of Persia to relay messages during
battle.
Even Julius Caesar employed pigeons to send messages.
Pigeons were important during the two World Wars, as the U.S Navy and Army used them extensively
during World Wore I, as did Britain during World Wore II.
In fact, 32 pigeons have received the Dickin Medal, which is an actual honor bestowed upon
animals who serve in war.
Thirty-two!!!!
The Swiss Army kept a fleet of pigeons at their disposal all the way up until 1996.
While modern communication methods are a bit more effective than pigeons carrying notes
on paper, they’ve still been used since World Wore II as a means of spying.
Pigeons were used extensively during the Cold War.
Lightweight cameras were strapped to pigeons who were trained to fly over enemy territory
and snap photos for the CIA to analyze.
C’mon, who needs drones?!
Okay okay, kidding.
Pigeons have had a long and important legacy in espionage.
Maybe they’ll be back to use soon?!
2 - Microdot camera In the world of espionage, small cameras tend
to be handy little devices.
And that’s exactly why the Microdot camera is so cool.
Tiny, and easy to hide, the microdot camera photograph whatever you want.
But here’s where it’s really interesting.
The Microdot camera can produce tiny photographs that are only a millimeter wide!
Of course they needed special microscopes to read them, but they tiny size of the photos
made it possible to smuggle sensitive information as stealthy as possible.
The photos could be hidden in letters, envelopes, or even come on, pigeons.
Used mostly in World Wore II and during the height of the cold war, microdot cameras have
long been considered to have been one of the more cutting edge developments in the world
of top secret spying.
1 - Poison Dart Bun If you’re a CIA agent who needed to dispose
of someone without leaving a big mess, a poison dart bun that fires deadly darts is probably
your #1 option.
Using a modified Colt 1911, the Agency figured out a way to make poison darts that caused
the target to have a heart attack once the poison enters the bloodstream.
According to whistleblower Mary Embree, the poison was frozen into a dart but would melt
inside the person once they were hit, leaving virtually no trace of evidence except a little
dot.
THAT’s pretty cool…...and pretty devious.
The existence of such a gadget first became known during the 1975 Frank Church committee
probe into the CIA.
Frank Church, a Democratic Senator from Idaho, headed a committee into the abuses of the
CIA and famously grilled then CIA Director William Colby about this weapon.
Colby bluntly admitted that such a weapon did in fact exist adding that the poison wouldn’t
even show up in an autopsy.
Just…..amazing!
According to Director Colby’s testimony, the bun was powered by a battery in the handle
and could fire silently.
He also pointed out that it was actually never used during an assassination attempt, and
was purely an experimental weapon.
Ohhhh reallllllly!
Here’s what’s next!