Today in History November 29th 1775, Sir James Jay invents invisible ink

various | November 29th 2010 | various

[mdittmar]

During the Revolutionary War, founding father John Jay’s brother, Sir James Jay, invented a method for the Patriots to communicate with each other that could not be intercepted by the British. Washington called Jay’s invention “sympathetic stain” or “white ink.” We would call it invisible ink.

[mdittmar]

The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources

To SIR JAMES JAY

   Head Quarters, Morristown, April 9, 1780.

    Dear Sir: The liquid with which you were so obliging as to furnish me for the purpose of private correspondence is exhausted; and as I have found it very useful, I take the liberty to request you will favour me with a further supply. I have still a sufficiency of the materials for the counterparts on hand. Should you not have by you the necessary ingredients, if they are to be procured at any of the Hospitals within your reach, I would wish you to apply for them in my name. I hope you will excuse the trouble I give you on this occasion.With great regard etc.

History is Fascinating!

[KoRn]

I love how they used words in writing back then. I wonder if they also spoke like that in casual conversation(I tend to doubt it).

Fast forward to the year 2010, and imagine what that letter would have looked like(probably would have been an email or text). lol

[csmusaret]

Sorry George. I wrote down the formula using invisible ink.

Jay

[jimfree]

I love how they used words in writing back then. I wonder if they also spoke like that in casual conversation(I tend to doubt it).

Even today my Dad speaks in colloquialisms that he did not use in a very formally written note to us recently. There are multiple languages or dialects within the same groups of people.

[SES1066]

Sir James Jay, a somewhat sad story there. Born in 1732 in NYC became a noted Physician and a founder of both Kings College -> now Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania. He went to England to help raise the funds for these colleges and was knighted by George III in 1762. He was active in the Revolutionary unrest and was a member of the New York Legislature for the early part of the war. It was probably he that did the most to influence his younger brother (13 years younger) John Jay to become more active.

Sadly James became disillusioned with both the war and American Independence and returned his allegiance to Britain and moved to British-occupied New York and then at the end of the war to London. John Jay upon learning of his brother's change of heart said that he would forget that his father ever had such a son and when he went to England to negotiate the Peace Treaty, both took pains to avoid the other.

[JoeFromSidney]

FWIW, one of the best books available on invisible inks is The Secret Science of Covert Inks, by Samuel Rubin. Last time I looked it was still available from Amazon.

Invisible inks are obsolete now. Any half-way decent intelligence service can develop them and read the messages. Still, they were historically important.

[mdittmar]

Thanks.

[bravo whiskey]

.

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Antiquity Journal  & archive  Archaeologica  Archaeology  Archaeology Channel  BAR  Bronze Age Forum  Discover  Dogpile  Eurekalert  Google  LiveScience  Mirabilis.ca  Nat Geographic  PhysOrg  Science Daily  Science News  Texas AM  Yahoo  Excerpt, or Link only?	Thanks mdittmar. General Washington built a spy network that relied on the use of invisible inks. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
· History topic · history keyword · archaeology keyword · paleontology keyword · · Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword ·