Invisible Ink In The American Revolution

Problems with invisible ink in the American Revolution There were plenty of problems with invisible during the American Revolution, but there were a few that were worse than the others. Three of the main problems were that supplies were hard to come by to make invisible ink this is the one that was the hardest problem to overcome. One problem was that blank spaces on paper were suspicious. Another problem was that when heated the paper would become fragile. During the revolution the ink supply was low and a hard to come by. The rebels and the British were using invisible so it was being used constantly. “On April 30, 1779, Washington advised Tallmadge that he did not have any invisible ink but was going to try to obtain some” (Nagy 34). George Washington was finding it hard to obtain supplies. “When I can procure more of the liquid C-r [Abraham Woodhull] writes for it, it shall be sent, at present I cannot say when this maybe.” (Nagy 34). Washington could not get supplies for invisible ink. “The supply of invisible ink continued to be a problem for Washington” (Nagy 35). Being unable to obtain supplies was very on the rebels to gain intelligence on the enemy.
“There were visible sections that stood out as being blank, which would draw attention from prying eyes” (Nagy 30). If you were not good at concealing where you had wrote the message in invisible ink it would be noticeable to someone that knew what they were looking for. With visible blank spaces the British would take the letter and test it for invisible ink messages. “There are many blots in one of the letters and in one or two instances the lines cross and run into one another” (Nagy 30). When the lines crossed each other it made the message extremely hard to interpret what the message was trying to say. This was a problem but not the biggest one that George Washington had with invisible