Read the excerpt from “Tools of the Spymaster."James Jay's invisible ink did not become visible by heating. As he described it, his ink "would elude the generally known means of detection, and yet could be rendered visible by a suitable counterpart." Jay's invisible ink consisted of two chemicals. An agent used one chemical to write an invisible message. To read the message, the reader had to brush a second chemical on the paper; that chemical made the message visible. The two-bottle system, supplied by Jay, gave Washington the secure form of writing that he wanted.
Read the excerpt from “Tools of the Spymaster."Later, as Clinton's troops were heading up the Hudson Valley, Clinton used another device to pass the news of his whereabouts to Burgoyne. Clinton wrote a message on a piece of silk that he put in a silver ball about the size of a musket ball. (Clinton also sometimes cut a message into long, narrow strips and coiled them into the hollow quill of a large feather.) Clinton gave the silver ball to Daniel Taylor, a young officer, promising that Taylor would be promoted if he got the message to Burgoyne. If he were captured, he was to swallow the ball. Because it was made of silver, it could not harm him.
Read the excerpt from “Tools of the Spymaster."The numbers that Major Tallmadge assigned to members of the Culper Ring were from a secret writing system he invented. He substituted digits for words that would be used in messages. "Long Island," for example, was 728, "arms" was 7, and "city" was 88. There was a number for each month, such as 341 for "January." He made four copies of his codes. He kept one and gave the others to Woodhull, Townsend, and General Washington. For words that did not have a number code, Tallmadge gave his agents a cipher. In a cipher, each letter in a message is replaced by another letter or a number.
Read the excerpt from "Tools of the Spymaster."James Jay's invisible ink did not become visible by heating. As he described it, his ink "would elude the generally known means of detection, and yet could be rendered visible by a suitable counterpart." Jay's invisible ink consisted of two chemicals. An agent used one chemical to write an invisible message. To read the message, the reader had to brush a second chemical on the paper; that chemical made the message visible. The two-bottle system, supplied by Jay, gave Washington the secure form of writing that he wanted.
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