SAPOL MUSEUM PART 2."I SEE WHAT YOU SEE BUT I HAVE NO EXPLANATION FOR THEE" GERRY FELTUS AUTHOR, THE UNKNOWN MAN. THE MICROCODE...

...I SEE WHAT YOU SEE BUT I HAVE NO EXPLANATION FOR THEE... 

GERRY FELTUS, AUTHOR OF 'THE UNKNOWN MAN'

These are the words spoken to me by Gerry Feltus in a discussion we had in 2012.  Gerry is a highly respected ex Detective Sergeant from SA Police who had the Somerton Man cold case on his desk during his service. 

I have known Gerry for more than 10 years and I have nothing but respect for him.

The above is a close view of the letter sequence AIAQC from Line 4 of the Somerton Man Code Page. In it, you can see the markings left by indentations by the person who wrote the letters and the microcode. Below you will be able to examine each individual letter in close-up. The individual microcode letters and numbers were written from either side of the page. Viewed straight on as you see them here, does not give you the best view as you will see in the images below.

THE INK H METHOD

the method used to create the microcode was a slight variation on a WW2 MI6 technique known as INK H. Essentially, individual larger letters were written in ink, and when done, tiny letters were written into the larger letters in pencil. TO conceal the microcode, another layer of ink was often added. This prevented any reflection from the graphite left by the pencil. The recipient would then 'develop' the code in those days, by soaking the entire piece in sodium hypo chlorate, common household bleach. There's a link to the MI6 manual that contains the description later in this post. There are other examples in this case where microcode has been used and other documentation that describes its use going back centuries.

In the Somerton Man code page example, the microcode was recovered from the original photograph of that page using a very simple technique which will be described in detail at the end of the 4 posts covering the subject. Suffice to say that at this stage, the microcode pages were shown to the good people at SAPOL Museum and they were able to see the individual lettering. The images are now in their possession awaiting further examination

First Letter A from the sequence AIAQC

I have rotated this letter so that you can better view the individual microcode letters and numbers

 

The Letter 'I' From the AIAQC sequence

Once again, I have rotated the letter for a better view of the individual elements within it.

The Second letter A from the AIAQC sequence

You can see that there is a light grey background to these letters, I believe that the light grey was left by the original 'template' letters written by the person who wrote the code page and the microcode was then et=netred into the shapes of the larger letters. the exact purpose of the larger letters is unknown at this time but I would feel sure that there was a purpose to each larger letter.

The Letter Q from the AIAQC sequence

The microcode in the letter Q was the first example I was able to glimpse in earlier efforts using a fairly basic technique. In fact, on the right-hand column of this blog, you can see that example. Methods used have improved greatly since that time. In the intervening years, I have taken in excess of 5000 images of the code page and other documents using various lighting techniques including UV, Reflective infrared, oblique lighting, backlighting, and a range of cameras and lenses. it has required my attendance at numerous courses and a great deal of reading including intelligence documents from the relative time period. It really is not as simple as it may appear, I applaud the efforts of some recent entries into the Somerton Man conversation when it comes to the code page and I am more than happy to assist if they wish.

The Letter C from the AIAQC sequence

Again you can see the microcode markings within the letter C, they read from left to right which tells us that they were written from the right-hand side of the code page. The microcode in this letter is less clear than the others in the sequence and it's worth remembering that these letters represent only 10% of all of the letters on the page and that's plus the various lines and 'flourishes' as well as the 'stain' marks at the top left and right of the page. In the letter C above, I am confident we can 'clean' up the view to give a clearer picture.

Of note is that a number of areas of the code have been deciphered, the cipher used is the 'HILL Cipher' and I made use of an online decoder. A couple of names have been gleaned from this exercise.

There are more posts and images in this series and I will be able to show some of the decoding results.

Another Reference

Detective Superintendent Brown when interviewed sometime later made the following comments that you can see here:

It says that the phone number was in 'tiny lettering'. The quote you see here came from a Wiki organised by Professor Abbott and my understanding is that Len Brown made those comments to Professor Abbott. Here's the link:

https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/index.php/Leonard_Douglas_Brown

Here's the link to the INK H description:

https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2022/09/somerton-man-mystery-truth-is.html

And more information on codes and concealments here:

https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/search?q=MI6+manual