Over the last couple of years, Australian researcher Gordon Cramer has been promoting (and indeed gaining a little media attention for) his various theories about the Somerton Man that he has patiently built up over the last four years: for example, that the dead man was a Cold War spy and that the Rubaiyat note contains microwriting.
Specifically, Gordon asserts that he can discern microwriting inside a number of the letters that were found on the back of the Rubaiyat, most notably the letter “Q”.
As I understand it, his claim is that even though the contrasty writing in the image (looks like it) was written in a laundry pen on a shiny surface (say, a print of a photograph), that overwriting process still managed to preserve the fine detail of the original microwriting additively within it: and that by using a carefully chosen sequence of image enhancement steps, he thinks he has been able to reconstruct that original microwriting.
I was sceptical of this claim for many reasons. For instance, it seems hugely likely to me that we can see a small part of the original writing that (one would hope) lies beneath the laundry pen marks…
…yet as far as I can see, there is no sign there of any microwriting. And if microwriting isn’t there, why should microwriting be anywhere else? But I digress. 🙂
More recently Gordon has, in response to questions from me, elucidated the experimental process he followed by which he believes he was able to make that microwriting visible. As a result, I have gone through the process of trying to understand and reproduce his results, and I’m posting here to explain what I found.
Here’s the original Q, cropped and rotated counterclockwise by 90 degrees but otherwise completely unchanged from the original scans:
We can, without much difficulty, directly pick out the set of grey levels in the image that make up the curve of the Q (that Gordon claims contains the microwriting): and if we adjust the image’s levels so that this range (12.5% to 50%) fills the entire 8-bit dynamic range, this is what we get:
Let’s now blur this (which is essentially what happens when you resize an image to be slightly smaller than 100%):
And then let’s sharpen it up again to try to bring out the detail that Gordon thinks is there:
Amazingly, we can now apparently see the word “SEGA” starting to coalesce out of the digital mists. Of course, the video games company SEGA (which started out as “Service Games”) only became known as “SEGA” in 1965 or so (it’s the first two letters of each word), so the actual chances of the Somerton Man having been a secret Sonic The Hedgehog fan are basically zero. Possibly even less.
Yet a number of other image processing experiments I carried out on the Q produced different results. All in all, while I can see how Gordon extracted some kind of microwriting from inside the Q, I also believe that he could have extracted any number of different messages from the same source image (with only slightly different image enhancement sequences), and that he could very likely have extracted plausible-looking microwriting from any sufficiently noisy source image.
In the Voynich Manuscript world, we have an extraordinarily close precedent for this whole thing: in the 1920s, Professor William Romaine Newbold used large prints of rotograph images, strong lighting and large magnification to extract what he believed to be microwriting – specifically Latin shorthand strokes. The intense effort of doing this seems to have sent Newbold to an early grave, followed by posthumous debunking to the point that he is now often cited as the worst possible way of doing cipher research: which is not a good end to any historical story.
Here, though, we have something that Newbold didn’t have: the possibility of better images. So rather than institute yet another dreary bout of back-and-forth comment tennis, why don’t we just see if we can get a higher-resolution (and higher bit-depth) scan of the photograph in the newspaper archive and see if we can work with that instead? If there is microwriting there, it should come out clearly. If there isn’t, it should vanish completely.
I think maybe Newbold saw Greek.
Nick: For several years, now, I have been following your posts in re ‘Somerton’ man. Because my children consider me to be a paranoid ex-wife of their father, I have to be careful with names.
Have you had a chance to follow up a lead I gave to you several months ago? Somewhere there should be a record or mention of the disappearance of one of the scientists who were negotiating with Australian authorities for the purchase of uranium — for use in developing the “Atomic Bomb” at their White Sands (New Mexico) facility. Several of the scientists worked on the “Manhattan Project” when its headquarters were relocated to Chicago (prior to developing the bomb at White Sands). The man disappeared shortly before the appearance of the dead man on Somerton Beach.
This may appear as garbled information or outrageous misinformation. My apologies — I have the privacy of four generations to preserve. There are too many ‘coincidences’ for me to ignore. So, I’m hoping you may be able to contact the AEC for any information (new?) which they might be able to divulge. Another source of information would be the University of Chicago (original headquarters for the Manhattan Project).
BTW U-Chicago still keeps track of persons who received bomb by-products (cobalt-60) radiation treatments for various maladies (mine being a cleft soft palate).
Where’s the word “SEGA”? Is this a joke or I miss something?
Anton Alipov: if you look halfway along the top curve of the letter ‘Q’, you can see “SEGA” apparently written inside the line just over halfway across the image. But do I believe there was microwriting saying “SEGA” in the original image? No, I don’t. (But for what it’s worth. Gordon Cramer and Pete Bowes both read the same stretch as “35XCA”, make of that what you will.)
My technical opinion is that if you blur and sharpen any noisy image enough times in succession, letters will inevitably appear to coalesce from the haze.
Process akin to listening for ghosts in audio recordings, or “backward” words. One can find what’s required.
Don: “Paul’s dead man, miss him, miss him”, apparently. I was at a bar with William Campbell the other day, he told me it was all 100% true. 😉
OK, I think I can see it. The images are quite small in your post, but with several times Ctrl+ there’s indeed something like “SEGA”.
Well, sorry I think that even my “findings” of “undiscussed marginalia” in the Voynich Manuscript are more sound than that 😆 The similar problem there: it’s very easy to mistake parchment structure and aging for traces of human letters. That’s the problem of working with scans. When you have the original of the item in question, then even with naked eye you are more successful, because you can have good light and look at it at different angles.
No great surprise Nick. As per your posts on my site, you had made your mind up ahead of your experiment. You will not get the result I have unless you follow the instructions that I published. SEGA did make me smile though. The markings beneath the letter Q are quite definitely on the original code document and it was and is those same markings that you see on my image of the Q which clearly shows 35 XCA. Maybe a challenge for Byron to see whether that was a motor vehicle registration number at the time or perhaps even an aircraft registration?
Gordon: if that’s all you have to say to someone who has taken the time and effort to try to replicate your results, all I can sensibly do is to wish you good luck finding anyone else foolish enough to try the same thing.
Person A wanted to pass a secret message to person B by means of a miniature cipher written in the form of capital letters on the back of a book’s dustcover – the letters were later overpainted, then photographed …. recent, detailed examination of the photograph has shown a clear line of characters within one of capital letters.
In order to discuss this in an orderly fashion perhaps you might like to start at the top, dome, and we can work our way through it.
bdid1dr – With all due respect – trying to find the scientist who disappeared is like trying to find SM himself. Over 100,000 people worked on the Manhattan project and those “purchasing” uranium generally can’t be found.
If mentioning this person compromises you or your family, perhaps you don’t want him to be found?
If finding him is of interest and doesn’t compromise you, perhaps you could be a little bit more clear?
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/11/01/many-people-worked-manhattan-project/
.. an amendment – ‘an impression of the letters was later overpainted, then photographed.
My point being that nobody knows whether they are looking at the dustcover or the back cover.
Well very honestly Nick all it seems to show is that you do not understand the method that I explained to you, you did not follow the steps. I don’t wish you any harm Nick, I have said before that I think you’re a particularly bright person and I admire the work you do in other areas. However I do feel that in this case you are still out of your depth as you were with the Police fingerprint and Photography issues some months ago.
Your work, in this case, is full of generalities and lacks substance you neglected to include the image I had posted and you were unable to show any examples of the effects that you claim occur. It is nieve to think that people with even a rudimentary knowledge of image analysis would limit their thinking to the use of brightness and contrast and image sharpeneing you really must use combinations of backlighting, oblique lighting and UV lighting and then work on improving the image that you find. In the case of the Q, there was no zooming in or contrast applied, this was a straightforward macro image and I used the techniques explained to you. It was you who posted and stated you would just ignore those steps and now you loudly proclaim that it doesn’t work. Surprise surprise, if all else fails follow the instructions.You failed to put forward a substantial and well argued case and that’s the bottom line so go ahead and rant and rave in your usual fashion but all you’ll get from me is a knowing Not smile 🙂 Take care mate, I still think you have a lot to offer.
Gordon: as I explicitly said in the post, I have no desire to engage in yet more comment tennis, so let’s just get a better quality scan so that we can put this whole issue to bed once and for all. That would be a far more constructive use of everyone’s time.
the grey man: from where I’m sitting, the whole Somerton-Man-as-spy edifice seems now to be balanced upon whether the microwriting is there or not. Having tried to reproduce Gordon’s results, my (computer science-informed) conclusion is that there is no microwriting at all where he thinks there is, only noise: but rather than simply take my word (and indeed Derek Abbott’s) for that, I instead suggested that we now try to get a better quality scan. Does that sound sensible to you?
Once we reach an agreement on the microwriting, we can move “in an orderly fashion” to the rest, see where we get to.
Nuclear weaponry. Touchy subject at best. Dreadful history at its worst.
So, if all we can do is apologise for the instantaneous ‘vaporization’ of thousands of civilians (in Japan)
so be it. Just imagine the repercussions/retaliations which might occur even 50 or more years later. Some effects are still being felt (here in the US, anyway, including Hawaii).
The rape of Nanking, also is not forgotten.
So, perhaps some of your Australian friends may remember the attacks on Alice Springs.
There is also the battles and starving prisoners-of-war in Indonesia.
So, the military action in Vietnam is relatively mild?
Then we have troops in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is “all about” rare earths/minerals being sold to the highest bidders for use in the electronic communications and satellite industries.
So, was “Somerton Man” possibly only part of a team which were trying to obtain another “rare earth” for military use?
So: Spy versus Spy–paranoia — or is it still going on?
You might also want to check that the ‘hugely likely’ evidence of the original lettering is not part of a patina of scratches on the back dustcover, and bearing in mind that possibility are you intending to subject your own findings to a wider review?
The grey man: I’m not interested in speculation about what might or might not be there, I just want to have a higher resolution and deeper bitdepth raw scan made available to everyone, so that we can all have a discussion about what actually is there.
Incidentally, the odd thing about what I called the “hugely likely” original thin lettering is that no amount of image processing I have tried to do with it has made it visible where it is apparently obscured by the (rather fatter) laundry pen. So we have the paradox that even though Gordon thinks he can read the microwriting through the laundry pen layer, I can’t even make out the original line beneath it. Make of that experiment what you will.
This is your own speculation, your trump card. It is there to be seen by us all … I’m asking whether there are similar examples under the other letters thet support your claim?
The grey man: it’s not a trump card or speculation, just about any computer scientist will tell you that using image enhancement to try to read something right at the edge of perceptibility is something like 100x less reliable than getting a better scan and using your eyes. So let’s get a better scan.
“For instance, it seems hugely likely to me that we can see a small part of the original writing that (one would hope) lies beneath the laundry pen marks…”
If that isn’t speculation I’ll leave you to your own conceit …
the grey man: yes, it is indeed speculation. But it’s extraordinarily mild speculation based on clearly visible marks on the page that nobody need do any lengthy image manipulation in order to see.
Damn these spies, why don’t they make things easy to find? Anybody would think they were purposefully making it difficult. 🙂
Gordon: if you think spies are bad, you ought to try imaginary spies. Now they can make things really difficult to find. 😉
Then you and Gordon are at a speculative check, you see one thing and he sees another –
Voynich also believed the manuscript contained micro-writing in his older years; mostly paranoid and mind weariness, not micro writing.
according to some modern, competent and independent palaographers, there is ‘micrography’ in the Voynich manuscript. Micrography doesn’t mean you need a microscope. It means writing a third or less of the main text’s letter-heights.
Tricia – you might be interested in a post that I’ve written as part of a re-evaluation of the manuscript, and of the árcher-figure on folio 73v. In the last post for the ‘Sagittarius’ (which should appear on July 2nd), I show some micrography in a Sagittarius from a Caroline (Carolingian) copy of the Aratea. I have no idea what it says – all positive contributions welcome.
Micro-writing doesn’t make any sense. At all. Aside from the fact that this microwriting apparently appears in something written with a human hand (as opposed to in a printed work) itself is a little odd (google for images of microwriting, and basically the only “hidden in handwriting” microwriting you’ll see are about Tamam Shud (and mainly from Gordon’s site, I think).
But aside from all of that, what does it achieve?
The purpose of microwriting is to hide stuff in plain site. It makes no sense whatsoever to have a cryptic note with microtext embedded – because the cryptic note will attract attention (better something totally explainable like “bread, milk, …” that will be dismissed as a shopping list).
Surely the purpose of microwriting is akin to the purpose of encryption – to hide the message, but anyone who uses microwriting in this manner would assume (quite reasonably) that it’s presence in such a work will never be detected (eg there’d be no point encrypting text twice – and the intended security here is in the size, not the encryption), so there is no reason to further encrypt it. That is, the idea of microwriting saying “SEGA” (were it not for the reason that it didn’t exist yet) would actually make far more sense than something cryptic like “35 XCA”.
While I have some interest in cryptography, the most plausible answer for mine is one that Nick has mentioned earlier – that this is some sort of rudimentary prompt for a love poem someone’d written….(and the last AB really appear to have a flourish – and before people say Alfred Boxall, there’s nothing to suggest that SM might not also have had initials AB)
The structure, mistyped line and length all point at it, and I like the notion that the line MLIA… (which was so on his mind he was going to use it as the second line) is something like “My Love (or life) is always…” (and the Q = Queen, or Quickly or Quite or Question) (not convinced the C after the Q is intended).
I also like the notion (not entirely consistent with the Poem idea, but not so far detached from it that we couldn’t fit it in) that the last line is:
“I’ll try to move to SA (South Australia) – Moseley St, Glenelg – AB”
(the language is awkward, but if it wasn’t for the difficulty in rhyming Glenelg it would seem like the sort of cumbersome line that someone writes in an attempt to fit into some sort of poetic scansion – although MSG could also be “My Sweet Girl” or something like that too….
Dear Bill,
I think you heard ‘micgrography’ in terms of modern spy-craft. In terms of medieval manuscript studies, it means writing less than a quarter the size of the manuscript’s ordinary hand.
Micrography is well known. It was a Jewish speciality, but not limited to them – we have examples from some Persian manuscripts, Arabic manuscripts and I doubt that the one I’ve found is the only example in a Latin manuscript.
I’m not sure what you mean by it’s “not making sense”. It is a simple fact, and micrography itself is perfectly sensible in the historical context.
Or did you mean that the inscription I mentioned on that (non-Voynich) medieval image makes no sense in Latin?
Bill,
on re-reading your comment, I think it was not a response to the previous two comments. If so, apologies for what must seem a non-sequitur.
yeah, sorry Diane – should have been more clear. Wasn’t responding to a comment, more the idea that the text discovered in the Rubiayat would contain microwriting (or perhaps more pertinently, the writing that had TRACED the pencil markings would contain microwriting).
I was (vaguely) aware of the concept of micrography in terms of small (but visible) writing – but took microwriting to be more “spy-craft” (if you like) – which I understood to be the claim by Gordon (and others, no doubt). Suffice it to say, I’m not sure how one might embed such small writing in a pencil stroke (or even a texta stroke) – especially when we’re talking 1950s…..I think one has to be a long way up Conspiracy St (hopefully noone yet has come up with the idea that this is all to do with faked moon landings some years later in the South Australian outback 8) ).
Just a couple of thoughts: first, the ‘W’s are so awkwardly formed, I’m wondering if the person was not familiar with forming the letter. A number of languages that had changed to using Latin letters don’t have ‘W’, some from Eastern Europe, formerly using the Cyrillic alphabet. I’m inclining to the inscription being English, and tend towards the first letter of each word and possibly poetry – it would form two couplets. Hence my other thought – the crossed out line: perhaps the person thought of a second couplet that would express more, or perhaps they started to write the ‘MLIABO’ line, realised they had mis-written it as ‘MLIAO-‘ and upon consideration continued with the three subsequent lines. These points probably have been made already, but I hadn’t seen them on my trawl through a few sites.
Akute: bear in mind that what we’re looking at is almost certainly the South Australian Police’s reconstruction of the letters from a UV photograph, that itself had been taken to help make visible the indentations on the back page of the Rubaiyat. That is, they used something like a laundry pen to mark up a photograph, and then took a photograph of their reconstructive handiwork. Hence we’re not actually looking at anyone’s handwriting, but at SAPOL’s attempted reconstruction of writing-like marks (which is quite a different thing).
The crossed-out line indeed looks as though it was written out of sequence, and also missing the B- word. All of which gives credence to the suggestion that this page was being composed (e.g. writing a poem) rather than copied down from an external source (e.g. from a Morse Code transmission).
Nick – so the writing isn’t actually present on the book (which is now missing/destroyed, I gather?) but indentations from a note written using the book as backing? Or possibly from a blank page at the back of the book removed/torn out? That makes it much more difficult.
Akute: yes – as I understand it, the (thin) back cover had been removed but the final back internal page was still there (with the ‘Tamam Shud’ torn out by hand, and the indentations from writing on the back cover that was no longer there).
So we are (I’m pretty sure) looking at a digital scan of a (lost) photograph of a (lost) marked-up UV photograph of (hard-to-see) indentations left by writing made on a back cover that was removed, all from a (lost) book that was found on the floor of someone’s car (who remains anonymous to this day).
Just so you’re clear!
Regarding the five lines of cipher . I believe that you read each line from right to left . The first line is ” D B A B A O G R M “, or ” TAMAM SHUD ” . The second line that is lined through is ” I O A I L M “, or ” P S M P T D “, ” POISON SAMPLE EMPTIED ” . The third line is ” P T E N A P M I B T M “, or ” U E Y N M U D P A E D “, ” MONEY DUE PAID ” . The fourth line is ” C Q A I A O B A I L M “, or ” SAMPLE EMPTIED ” . The fifth line reads, ” B A G T S M A S T M T T I “, or ” A M H E R D M R E D E E P “, ” A DEEP MEHDR MRE “, or ” A DEEP MURDER MYSTERY ” . I think that the person who wrote this went back and lined out the second line after realizing that the fourth line was repetitive .
‘Hard indentations’ left by what sort of writing? Block capitals, alpha characters, cursive characters, whole words, numerics?
petebowes: without having a copy of the photograph that the laundry-pen-style markings were added to, we can only guess. It looks like we can see some faint markings, but these too might have been initial police pencil marks on the original, it’s hard to say. 🙁
In an ideal world, the Australian Navy would have kept a file copy of whatever the South Australian Police sent to it, which I would guess would have included a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ image. But I haven’t had any luck trying to find out if there are any files from that era: when I checked the biography of Eric Nave (who was without any real doubt the Aussie super-code-breaker who this would have been passed to), the files around 1948ish went a bit sparse. But that’s not to say there’s nothing there… it’s just hard to find.
It’s also possible that Jimmy Durham’s family may still have one or more albums of his best photographs in the attic somewhere. A relative gave a talk to an Australian Police Society a few years back, but when I asked people there, they had lost his contact details along the way. That’s also still an avenue worth pursuing, though.
The microwriting wouldn’t make sense IMHO. For it to be plausible we’d have to have picked up indentations through a page (I’d imagine a large part of the skill in microwriting is “softly softly”), which has then survived all the police techniques to preserve/record it….and we’re lead to believe when they traced a copy or photo of it with marker, some of these micro-characters were preserved….?
I’m at least as skeptical as you – it’s poppy-cock!
I notice that the micro-writing is now apparently appearing on everything ever touched by this case.
Aside from the fact that the technique apparently used to uncover the codes are (in my opinion) somewhere between questionable and impossible, if you take a step back it makes no sense whatsoever.
– One of the advantages of microwriting is that it allows you to be verbose…..that you don’t need to shorten things to cryptic acronyms (like SEGA/3XCA/whatever), but can use fuller language (not necessarily longwinded prose, of course).
– The purpose of any microwriting is surely for someone else to be able to read the message. Vague hints of indecipherable lettering doesn’t really seem to fit the bill. From what I’ve seen on the blogspot site (which doesn’t seem to publish nay-saying comments) the size of the microwriting is far smaller than they even admit possible – and once they get carried away with zoom they seem to forget how zoomed in they are, and how small the original must be. Further, I can’t help but be incredibly skeptical about a process good enough to [b]definitively[/b] show the presence of microwriting, but not in enough quality to be legible/decipherable.
– The letters on the page make no sense in the presence of microwriting. Anything that needed to be concealed could be concealed by microwriting and the “MLBIAO” stuff only serves to attract attention. In isolation, I might buy it (although I’d still feel it’s implausible) but once microwriting starts appearing all throughout the Rubaiyat it’s hard to explain why MLBIAO was needed (if it was an attempt at misdirection, why would it have micro on it itself?).
– The method they use to find the writing simply doesn’t make sense to me. While I concede I might be misunderstanding it a little, I don’t really understand how a printout (even of a very hi-res image) would have enough detail of colour depth for this all to work – further, where do these high res pictures come from (at best they are a hi-res picture of a picture of a tracing (possibly across multiple surfaces/media)? Further, we’re lead to believe that this microwriting (at least on MLBIAO [for some reason I increasingly read that as Me Laugh my Bloody Ass Off]) occured under the texta writing (which was a tracing of pencil/pen writing which is a lot thinner). So even if we go with the “it was written in invisible ink made from lemon juice” (for what purpose?) why then does it need to follow the line of the letters (if you are treating the paper with chemicals to make stuff appear, you don’t need lines to mark where the interesting stuff is going to be).
It would take rather a lot to convince me that the idea of microwriting as presented is anything more than an over-active imagination.
NB: I love the “AFIO disclaimer” which (IMO) is used to try to give more credence, but simply comes across as pretentious.
Milongal: everything about the MLBIAO scan leads me to conclude that the black writing was not present on the original Rubaiyat page, but was added to a (probably IR?) photograph of it by SAPOL using something like a laundry pen. Hence there is no way that we could be looking at microwriting there, because any putative microwriting on the Rubaiyat page itself would have been covered over by those pen marks.
In summary: to date I have seen no proof that the Rubaiyats hold any microwriting, and I’m not expecting to see any any time soon.
Furthermore: to date I have seen no evidence that connects the Somerton Man to spying or espionage in any way, shape or form, and I’m not expecting to see any any time soon either.
We agree Nick. I’ve never understood how we can transfer microwriting (which would be very light touch of the pencil or whatever you scratch with) to another page – let alone whatever process was used to actually make the writing appear in black (most likely as you’ve suggested in the past, on a glass overlay with some sort of marker). Even if we were to believe that such a transfer was possible, it is a neat coincidence that the (alleged) mico-writing nicely fills the width of the marker, not the original pencil or pen (or whatever) that would presumably have been considerably narrower.
But I agree the micro-writing doesn’t agree with me, and the espionage theories on the whole seem a bit romanticized (when there are many more mundane explanations) – Lord only knows what people would make of the contents of my bag/wallet/pockets if they found me dead in the street, yet all of it has a nice boring explanation. So I’ll not mention the little letter again 🙂
You shouldn’t use so many pixels, it just obfuscates stuff….
Milongal: Eric Nave was ASIO, he took delivery of a Rubaiyat with a back cover and sent it back with a few major alterations. Does this interest you?
Only if:
1) It’s true
2) The Rubaiyat he took delivery of is the same one we’re all clambering over here
3) there’s some description of what the actual alterations were
As I understand it he was high ranking in ‘C Branch – Investigations and Research’ (at least officially, I’ll take any point that what people actually do in organisations like that and what they appear to do can be 2 separate things). As I understand it, C-Branch had to do with Vetting (although I also found some possible references to immigration at that time), but either way there’s a plausible spy connection.
Incidentally, the only important people I’ve met from ASIO have far more generic names than that /tic
Pete: i think you’ll find that the ‘loose thread round up 28/8/14’ might serve to jog your over burdened memory; and you might note, as Nck did albeit somewhat indistinctly that I did not say Nave either saw the book or a copy of the code from the book, I merely mentioned that it was not in his area of expertise. My sincere regrets if you misinterpreted any of my related posts including the more relevent ones that went astray. Good luck with your latest revelations; I’ll just plug away and see what i can come up with to help close this case and with help of all who may be genuinely interested. Incidently I wonder is it likely that Eric could have known about the Nips and Emelia Earhart in ’37, the Sydney sinking of 41 or even the Borneo operation of ’45; Just like the Tamam Shud business, it is beyond the limitations of our historical knowledge snd expertise to speculate upon in fairness to his memory.
‘
Pete: something else about our other Navy man Gaston Thomson that I forgot to mentioned, not to be confused with Jessica’s brother CPO Ed Harkness, the naval telegraphic communications and cipher whiz; At one point young Gaz gave his dad’s address in Ben Boyd Rd. Neutral Bay as a place of residence, as did his younger rudder Quentin. I don’t know for sure, but if he was a ship spotter (not to be discounted in my view), he may have had a pretty good view of the harbour. For anybody interested in the spy theory, all three Thomson boys looked alike, which included their tall stature and according to one post on another site, there may have been some inclination for swapping their identities. Quentin was described as being a little slow so Gaston might have used this to his advantage in his suspectedconsorting activities with certain criminal elements. This being so, red Jessie, in all fairness, may not have known which of the three was responsible for her weight gain which culminated in Robin’s unplanned arrival….In equine terminology, if one were to put a fifteen hand stallion over a twelve hand mare, the male prodgeny is hardly likely to be near to the height of his dad. In human terminolgy, Jess was said to be well under 5′ (12h), SM 5’11 (15h), which is a mean average of under 5′ 6″ (13.5h) ; whereas the Thomson boys were between 6′ 3″ and 6′ 6″ (17 to 18h), therefore I’ll go out on a limb and suggest one of the brothers Grimm as the culprit, probably Gaston, even though he is said to have been of the non siring type. He seems to have been closest to older brother Prosper who he named as being his NOK when he went to sea as a boy sailor and so why should he not rely on good old ‘George’ to take care of patetnity issues when and where they arise… guess it’s no wonder my posts don’t get through your firewall eh…all my fault without question so apologies for any assertions to the contrary.
We don’t seem to know actually how tall Robin was but my estimation (from photos), is at least 5′ 10″, which would have been acceptable for his part as the swashbuckling Don Quixote in the ballet of the same name. Only a man of Gaston’s estimated 6′ 6″ (6′ 4″ just turned 18). is going to provide the genes necessary to achieve that height, considering his dwarfish mums 4′ 6″ (some estimates). Very limiting indeed for the prospects of mothering a ballet star without more fulfilling genetic input, exit SM who at 5’11 ( and certainly no midgit) just could not realistically make the cut. In contrast to the Thomson mob, the Harkness family were real shorties including Edmund (tiny Ed) the sailor and his three sisters who we will have to look into if that hasn’t been attended to yet. Interestingly another family member is listed as third mate on one of the vessels delivering Jim Beaumont and his Brigade towards their big ‘non supprise’ landing on Borneo in May ’45. I wonder if he had access to the onboard radio shack and if he might not have been able to communicate in code secretly with the Japs on the island,had he so wished (someone apparently did), He would certainly have had relay radio or even direct cable links with Ed at the NHQ war desk in far off Melbourne town; but shoot we might be stretching things a little bearing in mind the parameters of our specific investigative assumptions to date which on this site at least must be limited to murder/suicide right?.
I’m presently going through naval records and fair copies of A.S.I.O. reports. I have before me one such copy of a navy discharge record from December 47 clearly showing the acronym ASIO suggestive of a seaman buying out his time remaining in the service to take up a new similar vocation with the said ASIO. I see other operational documents from A.S.I.O post 1949 which refer back to dates in ’48 up until mid ’49 using the term ASIO in its acronisyic form. Seems to me that people were using the name quite freely at that time and there is some evidence to suggest that the letter ‘O’ might have stood for operations. When Bob Wake officially came over as DG NSW he must have known a new job was on offer as he appears to have been unemployed officially since 27th November 1948; one day before SA foundation day, two days before GMH day and three days prior to SM day; how’s that for timing.
Unlike Nick, I’ve not yet gotten around to reading Phenningwerths book on Nave’s life in intelligence and his backround to achieving his reputation therein. I was able to pick up a few snippets from other possibly less well known sources however, none particularly critical of the obviously very talented man but interesting nonetheless. For instance, Japanese was not the only language he had fluency in and there is quite good reason for this, having grown up in a predominently German speaking Adelaide household. I for one did not now about this, but apparently this may have led to his initial problems getting the nod to fight the hun in the big one of 14/18. Although he was seemingly just a normal Ausie kid, his parents were not and there were some ongoing problems with declarations of allegence etc as grandfather, old as he was, had not gotten around to getting himself naturalised or swearing allegence for that matter. Other German settlers were being rounded up with the outbreak of war in 1914 and if it had not been for his resourceful dad and a local family connection in politics, the whole family might well have found themselves in a labour camp for the duration. There but for the grace of god and perhaps the odd Phenningwerth of pursuasion, our homegrown codebreaker extrordinare might have chosen to offer his talents to General Cannaris in the next big one instead.
John: it’s only comments with links (and a few other blacklisted things) that the blog firewall doesn’t like. But all you have to do is take out the first ‘:’ and the last ‘.’ in the link, and I’ll reassemble it into a proper link when I moderate it up.
This could be a major breakthrough in this case…G. Cramer 2012
By further analyzing and then digitally improving the image of the ‘Code Page’, I have been able to identify some very interesting markings and what appears to be writings in various locations on the image. The writings are mainly in cursive style and are backsloped, some of the words written are legible as are numerous sets of 4 numbers with an X suffix. Other markings include small circles with a number on the symbol within them….This is the all telling section of quite a long winded and self serving post taken from the Mike Brash Smithsonian blog site . Note that G. Cramer’s eligible whole words must have since evaporated, X suffix’s are opposed to X prefixes for his collection of ships, planes, buses and phone numbers of late; also single numbers within circles that may be due for yet another game changing come back. Other parts of the post refer to the possibility of there also being a new development called micro writing which was still and the drawing board at the time and also every bit as false as anything we’ve encountered on BS/TS since. js
Early days yet, sez friend C.G. Cramer in his latest attempt to draw us into his web of deceipt apropose strings of tiny letters and numbers found within the original ROK code itself and in the alternate handwritten verse 70 endorcement signed by Maj. William Jestyn Moulds according our informant. Comprising aforementioned letters and numbers micro set within letters of an undecrypted message (code within an enigma), thus providing clandestine readers top secret operational data. We are reliably informed that everything seems to be based around page and verse numbers and lines which are shortly to be shared with all who believe in the tooth fairy, mother goose and non personal abuse. What we are in for is a re hash of every piece of utter tripe that we’ve come to expect from the BS/TS blog over the years, only even more proposterous if that be at all possible. I’ll give it a pass.
Gordon and his pilfered ‘we team’ yes man seem about to come full circle with their initial Nikolai Novikov identity for Somerton Man before the Long tall saddle nosed Major Pavel Fedisimov came into focus on the faked Tass pic and became the new suspect in chief. So we now have the recently recalled soviet Ambassador to the USA arriving in Australia to attend the Asian accented Lapstone Conference filling in for his junior near namesake Kirri? Novikov out of New Delhi India who was once captured on film wearing the “exact” same specs, like most other short sighted reds of that era. I’m not sure how Cramer and Co. will arrange for Nicolai to end up dead on a loney S.A. beach in 1948 rather than succumbing to the more preferred effects of old age in the eighties, which we were misled to believe. As for Kirri, I seem to recall something very similar for him, the old man living a full life and dieing in bed at home, lucky to have just missed seeing the old soviet dream come crashing down.
In the previous post, spelling of Kirill Novikov aside, the soviet Indian diplomat, the former US based compatriot namesake Nikolai and a Major Pavel Fedisimov of the KGB? are all one with Somerton Man according to BS/TS stalwarts Gordon, Misca and Clive. Like features generally though particularly the give away ears and nose commonality show out, a cedit to plain hard work and dedication…So not tongue in cheek on my part; more like foot in mouth syndrome as clearly depicted on the Cramer thread of 15th December, 2017.
I think that’s something that the BS site always got confused.
I don’t think there was a Major Pavel Fedosimov. In the Vassilievnotebooks, the codename “MAJ” was thought to be be PIF (although later they decided STEPAN was, and MAJ was actually Stepan Apresyan….
So maybe I’m wrong, but the PIF we looked at was not a Major. And then, of course, that turned into 2 PIF’s (both apparently married to a Vera Sergeyevna), so when that fell in a hole apprently there was an infinite number of PIFs because it was just an innocuous (yet curiously rare) name that might have been shared by many people…..
For mine, the switch from Novikov to Fedosimov was only the first of several increasingly desperate straw-clutching efforts….
It’s been a while since I dug too deeply there, but I seem to remember thinking it was odd that in several cases (including the STEPAN one) the codename seemed to relate to a predecessor….
Friend Cramer’s latest offering in defence of his ex mate Peter Bowes unprovoked scurrilous attacks upon his (once loudly lauded) credability, includes an updated explanitory briefing on concepts of micro writing and origins apertaining to it’s eventual saturation of our so called ROK code page. We now see that rather than take personal resonsibility for his mistakes and being caught out, GC has, in his inimitable way chosen to give all the glory for the original fabricated micro concept to a conveniently unidentified lady member of the so called 2012 Inner Sanction collective. He blamelessly admits to having acquiessed with the Gerry Feltus Quo, on proceedural grounds to support authenticity of her initiative. It’s a crying shame that the ‘sharp minded’ brains trust, chaired by a Sapol detective couldn’t agree on anything else of a game changing nature re our Unknown Man’s demise before it’s own sad demise.
SOMERTON MAN: IT”S OVER, the title of Gordon’s latest attack on Maj. Mould’s verse 70 inscription and JEstyn signature with a new camera to give a much clearer resolution, what’s more there’s a kindly invitation to download if you still have reliable old jet printer if you’re game. GC has pointed (red arrows) to but a random scattering of plain lettering which bear texture squiggles and nothing more, noting that a mid sentence punctuation on it’s side or inverted comma deserves special mention for superior trade craft involved, perhaps something akin to his original code letter ‘Q’ complete with readable inset dialogue, likes of which sent Peteb into such a spin of total enrapture that he shouted to the Heavens his unforgettable “Gordon has Scooored…I’m a Believer”. That he no longer holds that extreme view is of course nullified by later revelations that it had all been achieved with Tahitian lime juice & household bleach. In a related addendum post our man of minny talents mentions some highly technical graphic procedure that involves a header image for gaining a high relief exposures or some such, this suggests something more on offer than meets the eye.
Something posted just now on Gordon’s troll buster blog made me smile and I must confess to having a good old Cramer chuckle as well. You see, i came out pretty much unscathed in his exposure of worst offenders, others in order of culpability being Peter Bowes at Tomsbytwo, Nick Pelling of Cipher Mysteries and milongal on the Buses. Then there’s John Sanders of dark web notoriety (Cramer) an allegation made to Fandom of being mine host to a Sth East Asian paederast facilitator site with 19 known IP’s to avoid detection.
We can be reasonably and hopefully assured of our erstwhile comrade beligerant’s new resolve and preparedness to get one over on his lowly muppet antagonists. That being to end life’s trials and tribulations on a hostile sour note just for spite; So I’ll jump the gun and be first to suggest a fitting end for a false pretender, one designed to satisfy a lover of clandestine soviet style sanctioned hits, reasonably painless and untraceable if at all possible. My excitement is electric (no hint) on the upcoming possbilities, put’s one in mind of Norman Mailer’s ‘Executioner’s Song’ with the Gary Gilmore “Let’s do it” big bang finale, or by extension Nike’s own knock off version of ‘Just do it’. Get some Christopher, their biting down on the Styx according to like flim flammers of equal stature.
….go ahead and make my day gordon, post my offending remarks lifted from anemptyglass circa 2019, I have some doubts as a subsequent ‘charlatan’ taunt you accredited to Peter Bowes, you’d find for the contrary had you retained my predated ‘Fandom’ posts. The lies roll on like serious claims to being threatened with shooting from an on line conversation between two unlikely troll allies in Peteb and John Sanders. You claim not to be aware of your erstwhile pal Bozo Bowes, having a safely secure and legally aquired Beretta Nova shotgun, weapon of choice for landowners protecting their property from any loitering no account ‘dirty rotten scoundrel’ and/or control of low life rattlers from around the back yard dunny and hen house..Seek help Gordon, or on second thoughts don’t.
Ironic that he should obsess so much about people who according to him are bat-sh!t crazy and need professional help. I should be flattered he cares *yawn*. If I wanted to upset him I’d just write another post about how I can trace PIF almost continually from the 40s to the 60s – that seems to really get his goat.
But as you know, I’m in Canberra these days and I’ve had about enough time engaging with crazies (this time it was the ones that came to bleat to an empty building that everyone else is a sheep or something).
JOHN SANDERS (Pooh Bear) & MILONGAL (Eeyore) REVEALED on Tamam Shud Blogspot 24th Sepember 2018, author Gordon Cramer as Hero @ Flash Gordon and Clive as Flash’s humble survant….Pooh Bear = naive, slow witted & brainless. Eeyore = glum, pessimistic & sarcadtic……Good example of your insulting trollish potential Christopher Gordon Cramer.
Better to state the facts here is as anywhere else. Should anyone with a pentchant Peteb’s ceaseless devotion to tedious historic subjects mainly ado about poor Constable John Moss and his run of badluck as first offender at the SM crime scene is to be condmended [sic]. Let’s run a foibles check on the things Moss might have done differently and see who thinks they’d have had a better outcome. Let’s be real, anyone could miss a packet of matches especially if covered with horse manure or trodden into the sand; or perhaps even list them with cigarettes and paired as such by the court reporter. The constable CLAIMED to have been off duty in the evening when Strapps saw a man with herringbone pattern brown trousers set against a brown pinstriped jacket (botton flaps) and thankfully he avoided any disputation with young Gordon. Regarding the constable’s inability to find a one inch piece of paper in a narrow fob very close to a dead man’s private parts, i think he gets a pass on those grounds alone, pointing out also in his favour that it was only recovered in May or June (Brown) the following year and with assistance of a handy pair of tweezers. Poor fellow got sent to coventry (Henley Beach) before the inquest and we don’t have to be told what for. Guess that’s my take and hope that it provides the sort of response our erstwhile colleague might expect from a fellow troll, certainly not a Long Tan veteran, merely an everday badly trained and poorly led jungle killer from days when ‘we were soldiers once and young’.
Good enough for any level headed reasonably intelligent SM punter Peteb, it was never intended to be to your satisfaction, so ‘obla di obla da’ which translates to sweet FA in the vernacular.
It’s indeed a badge of honour coming from a person of such efffluence in the SM disinformation hierarchy; Just hope I can live up to such accolades and able to give thanks in person sooner or later. Maintain the rage old fella me lad and we’ll get this sorted one way or another, you can count on it y’hear.
I forgot I was labelled Eeyore…..I thought it was kind of accurate at the time TBH – not for the gloomy and depressed, but for the pessimistic (I prefer realistic) and sarcastic.
Perhaps Flash was actually Rabbit….
+++++++++“
Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”
++++++++++