Sydney needs more "Nerdy Things to Do" especially for young people. As part of the Science Week activities at Chau Chak Wing Museum I'm offering a 40 minute Enigma machine demo talk (book a ticket below) and following that a more casual display & blitz talks. events.humanitix.com/the-enigma-m...

The Enigma Machine - Live demonstration and explainer

As part of SMRI’s Science in the Museum event, Mike Pritchard from the Australian Spy Museum will conduct a live demonstration of a configured Enigma machine.

events.humanitix.com

This is just fantastic

Polly Mackenzie@pollymackenzie.bsky.social · 2mo ago

My nine year old asked for a Rosetta Stone cake for his birthday

We're doing something new with a spycraft show 'n tell at the intimate cocktail bar Dulcie's Kings Cross this Sunday night. Spaces are very limited, tickets via Dulcie's site. www.dulcieskingscross.com.au/event-detail...

Spycraft: From Mata Hari to the Bay of Pigs (Special Edition Sunday History Talk) | Dulcie's

Our Sunday History Talks are back, and this time we're stepping into the world of spies. For one special evening, we're joined by Mike Pritchard, founder and curator of the Australian Spy Museum, for ...

dulcieskingscross.com.au

@aus_spymuseum Featured Artefact this week is a 1981 Stasi infrared camera briefcase for night surveillance. Outside - you see the fake latch that conceals a lens and the bag has three openings behind the faux leather, these allow Infra Red flashes to pass through. Fantastic kit 1/2 more ...

When the Imitation Game met Harry Potter @aus-spymuseum.bsky.social was at @sydney.edu.au this afternoon and there are thousands of people here for graduation (congrats to all). It took a bit of patience to get a suitably moody pic with no bystanders, made easier by the already monochrome sky.

Aus Spy Museum recently acquired more Australian Womens Army Service (AWAS) uniforms for our WWII women codebreakers collection. Alongside British WRNS and US WAVES, our AWAS and Navy WRANS helped collect and analyse the intelligence that would turn the tide of WWII. #cryptography #intelligence

Interested in espionage and spytech history? @aus-spymuseum.bsky.social Featured Artefact this week is an early 70's Alpha One. Made in the US by Amerex especially for the IC, the Alpha One succeeded the 1960's EDI mini reel to reel recorders used by allied agencies including ASIO. 1/2 more ...

Australian Spy Museum Featured Artefact this week is a 1960's KGB Nyrok camera designed for Kompromat photography - that is, capturing extortion material to use against Western diplomats and corporate types. Long before Epstein it was a KGB expertise. #Cameras #Espionage #ColdWar 1/2 ... more

Interested in espionage / tradecraft history? Here's a quick (22 minute) tour of some of Australian Spy Museum's toys displayed at BSides Adelaide in 2024. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqnL... Follow us here for more cool retro spycraft.

(392) Tools of the Dark Side | up close with genuine rare espionage equipment | Stasi KGB CIA ASIO

YouTube video by Pocket Women

youtube.com

With ANZAC Day coming up our Featured Artefact this week is the Australian A510 radio, as used by our Army and SAS units in Borneo and early years in Vietnam. The A510 was a portable HF (High Frequency) transceiver developed in the early 1950’s by Amalgamated Wireless Australasia (AWA). 1/3

@aus-spymuseum.bsky.social Featured Artefact this week is a 1980's Stasi concealed camera briefcase. A spring-powered Robot camera is driven by: - A microswitch trigger (location in x-ray), and - A battery-powered solenoid on the shutter release Each press of the microswitch is one exposure 1/2

This month we added further to an already amazing collection of items related to Alan Turing - mathematician, codebreaker, computing & AI pioneer. If you have secure exhibit space in Sydney for something incredible that will draw an audience, we'd love to talk.

Australian Spy Museum features some Moscow artefacts A transparent chair for secure meeting rooms - even the bolts are made of perspex so there are no places to hide a bug And parade jacket of a Signals NCO of the Moscow Region FSB Follow Australian Spy Museum for more retro-espionage goodness.

Here's a bonus @aus_spymuseum object this week. I've acquired most of the gear from the surveillance post in "The Lives of Others". This week we added a Robotron typewriter and these look Freaking Awesome together. Who knows someone in Sydney that might like to host a jaw-dropping spycraft popup?

This weeks @aus-spymuseum.bsky.social objects are from ground zero for the Cold War - immediate postwar Berlin. Signed photo of Reinhardt Gehlen of Germany's Abwehr intel service, plus an Abwehr SE109/3 spy radio. Also two German subminiature cameras - a late 1930's SOLA and a "Ritterkreuz" Minox.

This week's Featured Artefact - ultra rare Yugoslavian KZU-31 teleprinter cipher machine. The 1990's Balkan Wars destroyed just about all the JNA's original equipment, I cannot find another example or even other photos online. Follow @aus-spymuseum.bsky.social for retro spycraft goodness. 1/2

Australian Spy Museum Featured Artefact - rare subminiature spy cameras - from Left to Right: c1980 The stunning EFBE 😍 made by Franz Brinkert c1962 Stasi Uranus 5 creates 2mm x 1.5mm Mikrats c1960's Soviet GRU SRC-1 - is one of only five examples known, I'm very happy to bring this to Australia

Australian Spy Museum Featured Artefact this week is one of our surveillance listening stations. We have a few of these from both East & West and its interesting to see how they compare, and evolved over time. Follow us here for more retro-spookery 1/2 more ...

Thanks @SecTalks for the invite to present on Tuesday, and to @Atlassian for hosting 😀 @aus-spymuseum.bsky.social presented "The Enigma Machine - Live Demo'd and Explained" with hands-on time. As a bonus we included these rare cipher devices used in WWII Occupied France. Have a great weekend!

CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in a U2 spy plane on May Day (May 1st) 1960. He was captured, put on trial in the Soviet Union and sentenced to 10 years in prison. On Feb 10th 1962 he was exchanged for Rudolf Abel on the "Bridge of Spies" in Berlin. Here's some nice U2 artefacts: 1/2

Some bookish and nerdy Australian Spy Museum Acquisition News. We've recently added some more Turing papers "Computability and Lambda Definability" in the Journal of Symbolic Logic - 1936, and "The Word Problem in Semi Groups with Cancellation" in Annals of Mathematics - 1950. more ... 1/3

Well, looks like we are a hit with the kids You've know you've made it when someone spots you in the wild and posts you on F*ck Yeah Stickers fuckyeahstickers.tumblr.com/post/8039319...

Australian Spy Museum acquisition news! We've completed our NATO 1950's teleprinter cipher system. It includes the Hagelin T-55 cipher appliance that sits in between our T68D teleprinter and a comms circuit, providing a high security point to point link. In below comment, link to T68D demo video

“We need a society that once more values its dreamers and visionaries, those *** who uncomfortably go against the grain of what and who we are, exploring our nightmares *** so we might better know ourselves … Yep - 💯 this, might have been lifted from Aust Spy Museum’s mission statement website

The Australia Institute@australiainstitute.org.au · 7mo ago

“We need a society that values its visionaries, those who go against the grain to create new dreams that reveal other ways of being,” writes Ben Quilty in his essay, Collective Ambition, featured in A Time for Bravery. Buy your copy of A Time for Bravery: australiainstitute.org.au/store/A-Time...

Something seasonal - for 30+ yrs NSA, then later the CIA, DIA and NRO have been putting out Christmas decorations. Here's some of NSA & CIA's greatest hits - including Enigma, U2 and portraits of Donovan, Dulles, Helms and Tenet. Thoughts are with all of you over the break, we'll see you in 2026.

Australian Spy Museum Featured Artefacts this week are from WWII Europe - a mysterious allied cipher device and a clandestine radio First - a British B2 spy radio used in Occupied France by agents of the British SOE, American OSS and the French Resistance. Alongside it more B2 spares. 1/2 More ...

Two weeks ago I shared a photo of our Enigma at The Beehive, the New Zealand parliament. Here it is at the Reichstag in Berlin.

At an Enigma demo a few months ago someone asked “How would a Chinese Enigma work?” I’d never seen an electromechanical Chinese machine (closest I could think of was Japanese Purple). Now this super interesting relic has been found in the US. Not cipher, But Look At It 😍 www.npr.org/2025/07/05/n...

How this long-lost Chinese typewriter from the 1940s changed modern computing

The concepts in the MingKwai typewriter underlie how Chinese, Japanese and Korean are typed today. The typewriter, patented in 1946, was found last year in an upstate New York basement.

npr.org

This week's Featured Artefact is an old-school tradecraft item - a Destruction Container concealed in a soap dish. Inside it is a 35mm film wrapped around a camera flash bulb - when the soap dish is opened the flash is triggered, destroying the light-sensitive film. 1/2

Before the CIA there was the OSS or Office of Strategic Services a key player in allied irregular warfare. Formed in WWII the OSS combined the paramilitary sabotage functions of Britain's SOE with subversion and propaganda. It is to the latter function that these exquisitely rare items belong. 1/2