Secret Gadgets

Have you ever wanted to try out some of the awesome gadgets that secret agents use in movies and books? Maybe Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone or the amazing watch with tracking devices from Spy Kids? Or how about a spycam that lets you see around corners. These gadgets may seem far-fetched but they are based on the tools and gadgets used by real secret agents over the years.

For hundreds of years, spies had to make do with simple tools for gathering or sending information. They wrote secrets in invisible ink, or sent messages back to base by carrier pigeon. It wasn’t until last century that their tools became more hi-tech.

Spies began to use cameras to take pictures of enemy targets and radios to send and receive messages. They also used complex machines to send and receive messages in code. The CIA calls the gadgets that spies use to steal secrets ‘sneakies’.

Sneakies

Spies often carried all the equipment they needed for a mission in one handy container. From the outside it might look like an ordinary briefcase. But inside was packed a range of ‘sneaky’ tools: miniature cameras and recording devices inside pens or other office equipment. A camera could also be concealed within the button on a spy’s jacket.

In the late 1960s, the KGB fitted radio transmitters inside the heels of their targets’ shoes so they could listen in to their conversations.

The Man Who Was Q

During World War Two a clever inventor named Charles Fraser-Smith designed a range of gadgets to help British prisoners of war escape, or for secret agents to spy on the Nazis. He made hairbrushes with a secret compartment to conceal tiny maps, a compass and a miniature saw.

He also hid maps under playing cards, saws in shoelaces and cameras inside cigarette lighters. The character Q in the James Bond novels and movies was based on Fraser-Smith.