A LESSON IN MICROWRITING: THE HAY BANKNOTES

 

HAY TWO SHILLING BANKNOTE

& THE STAHL SIGNATURE:

Signature of R M Stahl concealed micro written code as shown above 

The above is a two-shilling banknote from the Hay Internment Camp, it was released, along with two other denominations, One Shilling and a Sixpence note, in March 1941. The designer was George Adams Teltscher, a man of considerable skill as a designer and as an artist.  In fact, in recent years there was an exhibition of his work held in London. It had been authorised by his wife.

In designing the banknotes George called in the artistic skills of others including artists and the only engraver to be interned, I will dig that name out in the coming week.

In my estimation, the main feature of these banknotes is that the notes themselves were made up almost entirely of letters and numbers, here are some examples taken from the above note:

1. The end of the word SHILLINGS found at the top of the banknote:

Here you can relatively clearly see micro writing the letter N as highlighted and across the top of the letter G as highlighted. 

What is very interesting about the locations of the micro writing, is that this is exactly the same technique that was later to be used in the edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that Jestyn gave to Alf Boxall in 1945. In that instance, micro letters and numbers were found in the text on the title page of the book which was adjacent to the page that contained the inscription of Verse 70 from the book.

On close examination, you will find that every horizontal line running through the note and the letters, is made up of letters and numbers.

2.  The Right-Hand Borders

As you can see on the image to the right, there are in fact two borders, the first inner and rectangular border looks at first glance to be a series of short horizontal bars or lines.

However, on closer inspection, you will see that the 'bars' are in fact strings of letters and numbers, 14 characters in each but sometimes less.

These sets of numbers and letters in the bars would make an ideal 'one time pad.'

The next, outer, border looks to be strands of barbed wire curled up to form a barrier. Again, on closer inspection, you find two things, the wire when looked at from a distance reads 'WE ARE HERE BECAUSE WE ARE HERE BECAUSE' and it repeats 3 times to surround the entire banknote.

And, significantly, the strands of 'wire' themselves are made up of letters and numbers as you may be able to make out in the highlighted areas of the wire.

3. We Are Here Because...

This image above is taken from the top, outer border of the banknote, here you can more clearly see the tiny letters and numbers written into the 'barbed-wire'. 

Almost invisible to the human eye, even the thinner wires contain tiny micro written letters and numbers. The same technique one would use to write within cursive writing just as we find in the Verse 70 Inscription in the Boxall copy of the Rubaiyat.

4. The Signature:

From the exact same banknote, this is the signature of the manager RM STAHL, you may also be able to just make out the shapes of letters and numbers within the red horizontal 'lines'.

In the signature, you can see variations in color depth and the challenge has been to lift a layer of colour to see what, if anything, lies behind it.

Here's the result of that effort in which I used Infrared transmission:

In all, I think would have posted around 20 times on issues related to the Hay banknotes since 2016. With images and discussions on the people, the techniques and examples. Here's one that has a fair spread:

https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2016/09/somerton-man-hidden-codes-otp.html

 If you would like to know more then type the word 'HAY'  into the search box to the top right of this page.

Of interest is that in April 1941 the NSW Police confiscated the Hay Banknotes and the plates. I would imagine that the 'Police' would have been Special Branch.

ABOUT MICRO WRITING

A little background, as a technique, micro writing goes back 4000 years to the Mesopotamians, they used mall tablets, 1-inch square, and engraved miniature hieroglyphics on to them using a very thin wire. From that point on, the method spread across the Middle East and into various cultures and religions. For example, there are some stunning examples of Hebrew Art that have incredible detail to the extent that you would think it couldn't have been possible:

Philip Jakob Spenner Portrait, 17th Century

Every detail of this portrait is in words.

This next image is a personal favourite:

A magnificent artwork, 19th Century by a husband and wife, Margolioth. This piece sold at Sotheby's in 2014 I believe, it fetched $185000 USD. Once again, every part of this image is on micro written words.

For more examples of Micro Writing, follow this link:

https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/p/examples-of-micro-writing.html

How difficult is it to write at a micro level?

A fair question it was one I think which was put by Pete Bowes on his blog. The short answer is, it depends. I know from experience that a child of 8 years old can take to very quickly and can write legible words in a decent format within just a few hours. If that child were to persevere then they would be able to create small scale but detailed artworks within a month or so. Children of that age have not yet been conditioned into writing full-sized adult style words.

What about adults, say someone of Alf Boxall or Jess Harkness's age?

 A little longer but not excessive, I would say competent within a couple of weeks with daily practice and skillful within 2 months or so. When I say skillful I mean to the level of creating the inscription of verse 70 complete with its micro writing and the ability to conceal microcode within images and text as found on the Title page of the Boxall Rubaiyat.

A small note for Pete, 'Epenstein' wasn't the designer, he was the camp leader.

Another few notes for Pete: according to Telscher's wife Sarah, George, on his return from Australia, worked for the British Military designing amongst other things, propaganda leaflets. That was in early 43. Interestingly British SOE produced a manual later that same year that described the technique of concealing codes and characters behind cursive writing. 

I have a copy of that manual should anyone like one. I also have a copy of a CIA document that describes hiding messages in borders and dividing columns on pages.