Infographic Category Mind-Blowing

The Spy’s Toolkit: Espionage Gadgets Throughout the Ages

By | source: Apr 7th, 2014

Everyone loves a good spy gadget. From the childhood days of wearing mirrored sunglasses and writing in invisible ink to watching Q’s ridiculous gadgets in James Bond movies, there is a fondness I have for all things ‘spy’. Here in this infographic we go back in history to some of the best real-life spy gadgets. I stress the ‘real life’ aspect because although you won’t find anything quite like James Bond’s underwater-car or wristwatch grapple-guns (though camera pigeons come close to that level of awesome), there are however some pretty incredible stories behind some of these gadgets.

Take for instance the Fake Monopoly Game from the 1940s. John Waddington LTD (who owned the rights to Monopoly in the UK) worked with M19 (secret British spy agency) to distribute information to POWs via fake board games of Monopoly. These ‘board games’ would contain maps, files, and compasses disguised as playing pieces. The way the soldiers would know whether or not they had one of these special sets was by the indication of a red dot on the Free Parking space. Amazingly they smuggled these boards in by setting up fake charities to infiltrate enemy camps (still don’t really understand how that works but ok).

That was definitely my favorite spy gadget from this list. Which one did you like the most? Leave some comments down below!

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