British spies were try out with all kind of invisible ink during the first World War . In 1915 , one spy was quite frantic to find a rather handy elbow room to create one . His orphic ingredient ? seed .
The founder and head of MI6 at the time , Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming , reportedly declared “ every man his own stylo ” when presented with this novel method acting of cook up unseeable ink . The only problem ? If it was n’t fresh , the letter would become rather pungent .
ostensibly one spy who was stationed in Copenhagen had built up a supply of semen in a nursing bottle , and his letter in particular were go far with a foul smell . Captain Cumming insist that if this method acting was to be used , “ sweet operation was necessary for each letter . ”
But life story quickly became unpleasant for the unknown officer who discovered this DIY invisible ink . After he told his fellow spy about it , they ridiculed him so much that he had to be moved to a unlike authority .
The bookSix : The Real James Bonds 1909 - 1939by Michael Smith includes an excerpt about the semen ink method acting from a letter by one of Cumming ’s ship’s officer , Frank Stagg :
Secret inks were our stock in trade and all were anxious to receive some which came from a natural source of supply . I shall never forget [ Captain Cumming ’s ] joy when the Chief Censor [ Frank ] Worthington came one day with the announcement that one of his faculty had found out that cum would not respond to iodine vapour and say the man that he had had to remove the discoverer from the role immediately as his colleagues were making life sentence intolerable by charge of masturbation . The Old Man at once ask Coney Hatch [ lunatic asylum ] to beam female eq for examination and the slogan went round the office — every valet his own stylo . We recall we had solved the problem . Then our human race in Copenhagen , Major [ Richard ] Holme , evidently stockpile it in a bottleful , for his letters stank to high heaven and we had to say him that a refreshing operation was necessary for each missive .
It ’s unclear what the “ female equivalent ” was exactly , nor how it would be obtained at an insane sanctuary , but one can only imagine a rather inhumane and terrible scenario with vulnerable people .
Image : unseeable ink from the September 1935 issue of Popular Mechanics
world war i
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and polish news in your inbox daily .
word from the future , deliver to your nowadays .
You May Also Like
