Doctor kristie is at the Georgia Institute of technology where she teaches courses in the history of science, not see germany into the history of espionage. Prior to georgia tech, she was a professor at Michigan State university, chancellor scholar at the Alexander Foundation and lecturer at harvard university. Shes written numerous books including her most recent publication prisoners, letters and spies the stories of invisible ink. Her other books are surviving the swastika of Scientific Research in it because germany, science unde under socialism, et germany in comparative perspective from east German Foreign intelligence and seduced by secret in spite of this by technical world. In addition she is the author of over 30 articles. Her awards include fellowships from the institute for advanced study in princeton, fulbright as well as grant from the National Science foundation and the humboldt foundation. She received her bachelors in history from Oberlin College and her masters and phd in the history of science from harvard. Please welcome doctor kristie on secret writing into the world of International Intrigue. [applause] thanks so much for the lovely invitation to this distinguished group of international travelers. I hope to take you on a little tour of International Tour of history starting with ancient greece and all the way up to the present. What i would like to d do is stt off i get a lot of questions about how i got interested. Its seduced by secret secret if the spy attack world spy capital. I had one chapter on the east ministry. I was sitting in the archive and they gave me a pile of files and you get really tired when you see dust lying on your face and think why am i not finding what im looking for . I want those secret of secret writing and then i was turning the files and i came across this file and as a seasoned historians sometimes those are the most interesting ones. And i opened it up and my mouth dropped open. I thought this is exactly what i was looking for. It was stamped top secret by the secret Police Intelligence agency and its foreign intelligence department. I was super excited and my heart started racing and i was getting hot and i felt like a kid that stole a candy bar because i thought im not supposed to be seeing this. Agencies never want you to see their sources and methods and this was the key method throughout the cold war. He didnt exist anymore. Thats why we could look at their files. However he didnt want me to look at a lot of things because intelligence professionals knew that people not only share material, but they often use the same sorts of methods and this turned out to be true. So, at the same time i hide the file and i thought they must have made a mistake. Maybe it was a bureaucratic lapse and they arent going to give it to me. Ive put him in order to get it copied. Just in case i copied the whole file by hand it took a couple of hours to do this because i thought i might not get it and i wanted to burn it into my brain and then at the end of the day he hands me a copy. I waited for the whole afternoon but maybe i will learn the material better that way by copying it out. And then i erased the archive was up when they beat any building within steps that echo. So i raced down the steps with my sandals and i could hear the echo and i thought maybe they are coming back to get the file. Mission accomplished i had the file. So that was in the chapte that n that book. But then the reason i got interested in the secret writing which of course isnt limited to the cold war, its not limited to the cia. So i was teaching a class on espionage and technology and i could give a lecture on secret writing. So i went to the library of the night before. Not a good idea. And there was nothing on the topics of it is a bad idea when you wait until the last minute to prepare your lecture and i ended up doing an exercise and improvised and told him stories and that was the end of the 50 minutes, thank goodness. Then i thought well why isnt there anything written about this topic . Im going to jump ahead a little bit. So there is a book on cryptography. But there was nothing on in invisible ink and im going to define the terms of the public because it can turn the confusion about cryptography ciphers and secret writing. They are not the same thing. Often times they would say you wrote a book on secret writing. No it isnt about that. So im going to use this return button to go back to an earlier slide. So then i decided there isnt a book it seems pretty important i will write a book. It wasnt actually that easy because aside from the fact there must be reasons of the history written in invisible ink that i havent been able to read so i always wonder what i missed because it was so successful a historian hasnt dug it out but i was pretty amazed by what i did find and it was Intriguing Research and was able to find for me because my books were on the 20th century not see germany which is a dark topic and other work topics. And i had a blast i could go back to ancient greece and the light of the mediterranean and finding out what the ancient greeks knew about secret writing but of course i wanted to figure out also as a historian i couldnt write a bunch of stories and put it together. To put it together. That isnt a book quite yet. How important is that if there hadnt been a book yet and People Associated with lemon juice and candles how important was it . And i found out actually it was very important and the fact that it was important is despite the 20th century they didnt want you to see the files. But in addition, the British Comedy m. I. Five ca, the quicker that the fbi declassified a lot of material from both world wars and it was fascinating. It was filled with secret writing. So what i decided to do is id assigned this book dont like my title and the publisher that its the University Press scare you off. Off. The popular book. But i tried to do is tell the story of secret writing from ancient times to modern times from ancient rome to the nsa surveillance using stories. So today i will only be able to tell you a few stories but its chockfull of stories about how people used it and i decided that that was the most fun and engaging way to present the story. So thats the way the book is set up. Today im going to give you some highlights through pictures. And i should warn you i should race through the first 300 years or more than that because i want to get to one that actually things really start taking off and happening during world war i. So i promised that i would tell you a little bit about definitions. Ive got a handout for you. And i will show you the handout right here. So there is a big word. Dont be scared away by this. I only was it a couple of times in the book but its kind of the companion to the word cryptography. And you probably all know cryptography is about the codes. Welcome this is about it in writing. When you think of a dinosaur stegosaurus hiding something underneath. But it hasnt gone the way of the dinosaur yet. Its some of it is by way of definition. I will go back to a few slides. So as a historian some of the questions did it change the course of history . Sometimes it did. Was it a childs toy or was it Serious Business . Is Serious Business but its also fun and i wanted to tell you this biography of a special kind of secret communication. It is an impact on history and secret communications. And its illuminating to help understand for example the nsa and mail surveillance today because of the 20th century, it was in essence the same rationale for doing what the nsa does today when it intercepts email. So let me go ahead here. Ive told you most of the stuff here. So heres the big brother cryptography and little sister and here is the unwritten. I look at them as big brother and little sister because theyve gotten all of the attention whereas the secret inc. Has gotten less attention. Or hardly any. So this is your handout. My publisher has a talented designer and one of them had some famous practitioners and you could take them home with you. Like George Washington was enamored with sympathetic ink. So i will tell you a little bit about some of the famous practitioners as we go further along. And then here in invisible ink only a small part of it is about ink so im not going to go to any technical treatise about the inks. In the bodily fluids like saliva and semen and i will get back to this story later. You we want to know when people started using lemon juice that i was going to tell you today. So there is more to the story. The ancient greeks you might think it was then that it wasnt so im teasing you a little bit on that. But im starting with the ancient greeks because often times we can trace a lot of things back to the ancient greeks and i just love this painting here. He kept the western civilization alive, so to make a long story short. Somebody wrote a message warning of the persian invasion of greece. They then wrote it on a tablet and covered with wax and gave it to the king and he thought what is this blank tablet. Shes a disgrace to the wax off and then they were warned of the invasion so they could read how then and that is why the western civilizations kept it alive. Of course that might sound a little chauvinistic to us that some people might have paid for the persian civilization kept alive so that is the instance of how it really changed the course of history because the greeks had a bigger influence in history because of that. This is really important, ill e back to it later, and a love. So ovid wrote a famous passage, i think its one of the first ones that really used, you know, described invisible ink in the sense of an invisible substance that you can make visible. He used a plant thats a milky, glute now substance, and you can put ashes on it, and you can read the message. So i tell these stories in more detail in the book. So now id like to turn to the renaissance. So the book is organized chronologically so you can chart the impact on history. So giovanni is one of my favorite characters in history here on the left. He looks a bit like a a magician there, but he wrote a lot of books on scientific topics and cryptography and only one chapter on invisible writing, and its the only thing you can find from the early period. But i just loved that, the cover eut i just loved that, the cover looks like a magician, and it captures the magical aspect of secret writing. And then i wont dwell on this. We did a video. This is my friend, jason lye, a color chemist, and dell a port said if you use alum and vinegar and you write on an egg, you know, they dont check eggs the youre in prison. So i tried reproducing it, and it doesnt work. Its gone down in history for 300 years, and my color chemist expert says it shouldnt work, and it doesnt work, but people have said it works because they havent tried it. [laughter] i have a contest going if you want to try it, there are more details in the video and on the web site about using alum and vinegar on an egg to write a secret message. I have a contest going. No one has won yet. It was on the radio and everything, and no one has come up with the winning answer. [laughter] so this is, im going to just skip ahead to francis [inaudible] spyhaaser and queen spymaster and Queen Elizabeth. During the early modern period when there was a conflict between the protestants and catholics, who would seize power, one of the first spymasters the world has ever known. I love these portraits, he looks so satanic in that portrait, doesnt he . [laughter] he was actually a pretty evil spymaster, he was ruthless. And youll see why in a few minutes. Queen elizabeth, i love this portrait. Im going to show you this side so you can look at it more carefully. This is called the rainbow portrait. Do you notice anything interesting about the robe . Ive got withen different answers in the gotten different answers in the past. You might not be able to see it way back there, but there are eyes and ears on the robe. So what do they signify . Listening and watching, right. They need to see things and they need to hear things. So i just think that so telling. And not many people know how much spying went on in the early modern period. And, actually, as someone who has worked in the 20th century and nazi germany and these topics that i thought were pretty gruesome, you know, i didnt know history was so gruesome until i started learning about the tudor period and Queen Elizabeth and mary queen of scots. There were a lot of people who died because of poor secret communication during this period. One of them was mary queen of scots. I dont know how many people know this story . Well, you can learn more about it in the book. Ill just tell you that her life depended on good secret communication. She was, at the end of her life, Queen Elizabeth had her kind of exiled in these remote castles with moots so she to smooths so she moats. So here she is her head being cut off, and her only friend in the end was her poor little dog who sat between her head, her decapitated head and shoulders. Its pretty gruesome. More details, narrative details in the book. Other people were more successful, and, of course, she used okay. She used codes and ciphers and secret ink, but it was very primitive secret ink using alum, so but some people were more successful. For example, john gerard, the jesuit priest, he escaped the tower of london using orange juice as a secret writing substance. And this is one of the most ten daring escapes ever in history. Not many people escaped the dreaded tower of london. So thats the good news. Now i want to skip ahead to the revolutionary war in america. I mentioned early on that George Washington was enamored of invisible ink. He called it sympathetic stain related to its also called sympathetic ink, there are various words and terms for the concept in the word. So this is one of my favorite paintings of George Washington. I saw it in francis tavern in new york city and had to have it for the book. Here you can see it bigger. Its not, you know, its very dark, but thats George Washington looking at his war plans, you know . On the map. So i just love that. But, you know, ill the tell you that ill tell you that it played a big role in helping him win the revolutionary war, secret writing. Because his spy ring, the culper ring, could moon candidate secret communicate secretly between new york and the mainland, and if they hadnt communicated secretly, the enemy would know what their plans are, right . So you have to communicate secretly. My contribution to this whole issue of the revolutionary war and spies is that this is james jay. Does that the jay name ring a bell . Hes the older brother of one of the founding fathers, john jay, and he was a doctor, a medical doctor, and he developed a secret ink for his brother, john jay. And i finally found this i couldnt find a portrait of him. They all describe him as this odious man, and i thought, what is he, ugly . Ive got to see what he looks like. So i finally found this portrait at the end, right before the book was going to be published. So here is james jay. So he was central in providing George Washington with secret ink. And i tell the whole story in the book, but that doesnt have a happy ending, because he never got paid, and he kept petitioning congress to get paid, and in the end he never got paid even though they said he did a Great Service for the revolution their war. [laughter] [inaudible] so this is, so, obviously, you know, as historians and other curious seem want to know, well, what kind of ink did George Washington use . Was it lemon use . No, it wasnt lemon juice because he found something that was imperiyous to heat, and it can just be heated up, so you want something more secure. So this man on the left in the 1930s was also curious. He was both a medical doctor, and he was also a photographer at the prestigious Huntington Library this california. And in california. And he had a lot of modern equipment in the 1930s, and im really jealous because he could actually deface be these letters deface these letters and pieces of paper. If i walked into the library of congress and said can i borrow George Washingtons letter, i want to put some chemicals on it, do you think theyd give it to me . [laughter] no. But he was allowed to do that. Actually what happened was john jays biographer was writing a biography, and he had the papers, and back then they didnt have them in archives and things, they were just in personal possession. So he let him have em so he could deface the paper like this and find out, experiment and find out what kind of secret ink it was. And ill also leave that to the book so you can find out what kind of secret ink it was. I cant tell you all my secrets. [laughter] im going to skip through this because i want to concentrate on the spies, but secret ink was also used for magical purposes. So i went to germ and retrace germany and retraced these steps here the find out more about that. So now im going to jump to the 20th century and world war i, because this is when it all starts happening. And im right on schedule here. So this is a chemistry set my friend jason, who you saw in the previous slide, got at a flea market. And i think you mentioned you had a gilbert chemistry craft. So there was chem craft and gilbert, they were rivals. So he got this chemistry set, and you could do magic in secret ink experiment did you do secret ink experiments . Oh, you did . You have a long interest in this subject. [laughter] [inaudible] yeah. So in any case, so that was a little pamphlet, a delightful little pamphlet made. It was actually very, you know, to the our own 21st century ears, some of the things i say are very, you know, we wouldnt write them today. So, but in any case, you know, they you say you can do these fn invisible ink experiments at home and all the color changes, and the color changes are truly magical. I mean, its really a great way the get budding scientists interested in science. But this chemistry set that jason found also had a little cobalt fluoride in it so we could experiment a little with it. But in some sets this is how invisible