Beat the Censor

[Cockayne]

I have several letters written by my grandfather during his time as a POW in Germany in 1918. The Germans to varying degrees have censored several of his letters. The censor has seems to have used “Black Paint” to hide my grandfathers words.

I am intrigued to know what is behind the “Black Paint” without damaging the letters. With all the technology we have these days I wondered if anyone has tried to “beat the censor” and would be interested hearing about the methods they used.

[ianw]

Viewing the letter in ultra violet light could help - at the very least you would get a tan !

[Andrew Marshall]

One of the snippets from the local paper the Gravesend and Dartford Reporter during the war describing how to beat the censor.

"A letter has been received from Berlin, giving a cheering account of life there, and of the happiness of the people in spite of the war. The writer advised the recipient to preserve the war stamp affixed to the letter as a valuable souvenir. On the space beneath the stamp was written: "Don't believe a word I have written. It's all lies. We're starving."

Regards

Andrew

[Fleur]

you could try putting a bright light behind the letter and seeing if the words beneith the paint come through.

Try a torch or a light box - it's worked for me on a few occassions where the quality of the paint was poor.

Fleur

[Clive Maier]

You could try asking the Imperial War Museum. There must be researchers and conservators there who have cracked this problem.

[Malcolm]

The Technical way is using Infra-Red imaging. eg. Guiness is transparent in IR as is Snopake, A strong lamp behind the object usually works. I used to have to look beneath snopaked text at the Uni sometimes

I do have an IR camera but that's another story.

Try your local (?) University and see if they have can help.

Around 1000nanaMetere wavelength tell them.

Aye

Malcolm

or if you are up in Edinburgh........