Australian Spy Museum
Collection highlights

Featured objects from our collection
of historical spycraft artefacts

From pigeon cameras and Enigma machines to digital spy tech the Australian Spy Museum has over 1000 artefacts that reveal the secret history of spycraft. We collect across Cryptography, Covert Communications, Counter Intelligence, Tradecraft, the Cold War and Cyber. Plus, ASM’s Modern Threats category examines today’s security challenges.

While everyone loves the spy gadgets the human stories are even more interesting. ASM’s collection includes original archives, letters, photographs, ID cards, uniforms and insignia from multiple figures in the history of espionage.

Cryptography

Codes and code breaking

The ability to create and protect your own secret messages while being able to read those of your opponents has been of paramount importance since antiquity. Nations have fallen because their secrets were discovered, and WWII was shortened due to Allied codebreaking successes. The science of creating secret messages is called cryptography, and the people that break opponents ciphers are called cryptanalysts.

The Australian Spy Museum’s cryptography collection begins with Renaissance books on secret writing and progresses through to digital cryptography. Cipher systems represented in the collection range from early manual methods like discs, sliders and tables, then through mechanical and electro-mechanical cipher machines (like Enigma), then transistorised and ultimately digital cipher systems.

WW1 M-94 Cipher Device (USA)

1920’s Lugagne Sphinx (France)

1930’s Enigma M1 (Germany)

1940’s M-209-B (USA)

1940’s BC-543 (Switzerland)

1950’s CX-52 (Switzerland)

1950’s CX-52 Additional Rotors

1950’s STG-61 (Germany)

1940’s NEMA (Swiss Enigma)

1950’s Fialka (USSR)

1950’s HC-9 (Sweden)

1950’s RS (Germany)

1970’s HC-520 (Switzerland)

1990’s Omnisec 600 (Switzerland)

Secret Messages and Spy Radios

Covert Communications

Once you have created your secret messages, you then need a secure method to send them to somebody else. Many methods have been used over the years – couriers and invisible ink, pigeon messengers, flags, the telegraph, radio, and now the internet. Covert Communications can be achieved via any of these methods and more.

The Australian Spy Museum’s Covert Communications collection includes dozens of spy radios and burst transmitters from both sides of WWII and the Cold War. We also have examples of more obscure secret communications approaches from pigeon messengers to voice-over-infrared.

Pigeon with WW1 camera and WW2 message tube

19thC. Tillotson key – for telegraph intercept and sending

WW2 British Mark III Spy Radio as used by the SOE

1950’s British Mark 123 Spy Radio as used by the SIS

1960’s Soviet Proton spy radio with burst transmitter

Early 1960’s USA HT-1Vietnam Village Radio

1970’s CIA TAR-224 spy radio with frequency synthesiser

Digital dead drop kit as used by Anna Chapman Russian SVR

Stasi HVA (foreign intel) clandestine message equipment

Stasi 32620 Numbers Station speech generator

Stasi HVA WSA-6 burst transmitter (compact Gladio version)

Sony ICQ digital radios favoured by Russian illegal agents

Stasi device for voice-over-infrared secret communication

Tradecraft

Cameras, recorders, bugs

To carry out their work spies use all sorts of tools – some of them like cameras are more familiar but others are highly specialised and sometimes built for a single mission. The rise of consumer electronics since the 1960’s has given spies access to increasingly sophisticated, cheap and tiny capabilities. Many tools are now entirely digital and so small as to be barely visible, so its interesting to look at the evolution of spycraft over time.

The Australian Spy Museum’s tradecraft collection includes toolkits, recorders, bugs, over 100 spy cameras, microdot and night vision equipment. Included are many vintage cameras concealed in everything from bras, belts and brooches to lighters and cigarette packs, purses, handbags, flowerboxes and jerrycans.

Dead Drops and Berlin Wall smuggling book

Mikrat Camera and micro films (Australian $1 coin for scale)

Russian night night vision equipment

KGB Ajax camera concealments – belts, bras, buttons & bags

Stasi bra concealment for Ajax (project Meadow replica)

Subminiature spy camera rarities – Sola, SFOM, Matchbox, more

Robot camera manbag concealment

Robot camera with electric solenoid trigger

KGB 16mm camera in purse concealment

Stasi GSK multirole body with device G1 sensor

Stasi GSK multirole body with SO pinhole lens for Kompromat

Stasi SO pinhole lens kit – (special Kompromat lens)

Stasi GSK multirole body with 17m film bulk loader

Stasi GSK Steuergerat (control appliance / trigger)

Stasi T1 sensors and Steurgerat control appliances

Soviet rollover camera with long film cartridge

Panasonic micro recorder – US Gov model with silent stop

Micro recorders of the Czech StB & Stasi, KGB, ASIO, FBI and Israelis

Czech E-120 micro recorder (record only, separate playback unit)

c1973 Nagra SN recorder (as seen in film “The Conversation”)

Cold War

The Cold War & Berlin Wall

The Australian Spy Museum collects items from both sides of the Cold War that dominated global affairs from the end of WWII in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. During this time the threat of nuclear conflict loomed large, while “proxy wars” were fought from Angola to Vietnam.

The fall of the Berlin Wall presented a unique opportunity to examine the operations and technology of a modern authoritarian state. The former East Germany had a vast mass surveillance program and parallel justice system run by its feared secret police – the Stasi. Here are a few of our Berlin Wall relics and mass surveillance devices that serve to remind us of the value and freedom of living in a parliamentary democracy.

1989 Berlin Wall checkpoint exit stamp and visa

Berlin Wall Officers Kit and invisible message detector

Memorial plaques for DDR border guards killed during escapes

Early 1960’s Stasi BG-26 mass surveillance recorder

Late 1960’s Stasi BG-31 mass surveillance recorder

1980’s Stasi CEKO high density mass surveillance recorder

Stasi TG-7127 field-deployed surveillance recorders

Australian Spy MuseumCollection highlights

Featured objects from our collectionof historical spycraft artefacts