Your top-secret mission awaits at COSI
Exhibit explores tools and techniques of real espionage.
We’re certain James Bond would feel right at home at the Center of Science and Industry’s current exhibit. The Columbus attraction is as much fun for adults as it is for youngsters, and it’s definitely worth the drive.
“Top Secret: License to Spy” is making its North American debut at COSI and will be in town through Sept. 7. The exhibition, which takes a look at the world of espionage, incorporates lots of handson activities. You’ll see gadgets employed by real spies: a shoe phone, an umbrella that doubles as a satellite dish, a briefcase with a false bottom, a hollow coin, an ashtray used by East Germany’s secret police that’s actually a camera and a watch from 1949 used to disguise a miniature camera.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Spy mission:
At the entrance to the exhibit, visitors pick up a Spy File that explains the mission: “The world’s most powerful computer chip has been stolen from the Brainiac Corporation. Your mission is to work out who stole this chip and why.”
“It’s all about solving a spy mystery using the tools and tricks of the espionage trade,” said Josh Kessler, COSI’s project manager. You’ll search for names, places, passwords and codes. If you’re successful,
you’ll uncover enough clues to solve a double-agent mystery in the debriefing room at the end of the exhibit.
■ At the Safe Breaker station, you’ll have to break a lock to open a safe containing important documents. It’s only after deciphering the transparent combination lock that you’re able to open the safe door.
■ You can tap into a phone conversation by attaching two probes to the telephone cable distribution point.
■ Talk into a special microphone to disguise your voice. Navigate through a corridor without tripping any of the laser beams and setting off the security alarms. Dig through trash for hidden clues.
■ Look through night vision goggles to watch a crime scene. Use a laser beam listening device to eavesdrop on an important conversation.
■ Try to find cameras placed in hidden locations. Try to locate two radio bugs strategically placed throughout a room. (You’ll find the bugs by watching an oscilloscope while tapping various objects.)
■ Look through a microscope at a newspaper clipping and try to find the microscopic dot that reveals hidden information. Look at mirror writing to figure out a message. Find hidden image in a household plant and find a secret message in a Claude Monet painting.
■ Learn about codes and code-breaking by counting words of a page to decode.
■ You can take a photo of yourself using a little camera, then see your image projected onto a screen. Use the computer to create a disguise.
■ There’s also information about real spies and the history of spying.
COSI additions
In addition to the portions of the exhibition developed in Perth, Australia, COSI has added 35 important artifacts from the CIA Museum, the International Spy Museum and the Cold War Museum. You’ll see a U-2 flight suit, training materials and a 40-foot-long Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile.
The artifact portion of the exhibit explores both the German Enigma machine and the work of Dayton’s Naval Computing Machine Laboratory. Established by the U.S. Navy and the National Cash Register Company in 1942, this Navy laboratory secretly designed and manufactured more than 120 code-breaking machines (called bombes) that worked to break the Enigma cypher.
In collaboration with Rick Beyer, who produced and directed the 2013 film “The Ghost Army,” COSI was able to obtain a replica of an inflatable tank that was used to deceive the German army in World War II. To mislead the enemy as to the size and location of Allied forces, inflatable rubber models of tanks and trucks were created to simulate the presence of an army group.
Those who attended the exhibit opening were fortunate enough to meet Francis Gary Powers Jr., the son of Francis Gary Powers Sr., the American pilot whose CIA U-2 spy plane was shot down in 1960 during a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace, leading to the Cold War’s famous “U-2 Incident.”
“I realized that kids today didn’t know what the U-2 incident was,” Powers told the opening day crowd. “When I spoke to high school students about U-2 in the early 1990s, they thought I was talking about the rock band. I realized I had to do something to preserve Cold War History, so I founded the Cold War Museum outside Washington, D.C. My father was tried and found guilty of espionage and spent two years in a Soviet prison.”
His father was ultimately freed, exchanged for a Soviet spy held by the United States.
A fragment of the U-2 presented to the Powers family is one of the items on display. There’s also a letter from Francis Gary Powers written to his family while imprisoned and his prison notebook.
“The Cold War is now over but in order to understand the war on terror today, you have to understand the Cold War,” Powers said. “What’s happening today is a direct result of the cold war and its ending.”