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The International Spy Museum is a privately owned museum dedicated to the field of espionage located in the Penn Quarter neighbourhood of Washington, D.C.

The museum was built by The Malrite Company at a cost of US$40 million. Despite being one of the few museums in Washington that charges admission fees, it has been immensely popular since its opening in July 2002.

Here are some famous -- and infamous -- spy gadgets housed at the International Spy Museum.

Thomas Boghardt, the International Spy Museum's historian gave the following information to Discovery.com. Read the full article here.



Bulgarian UmbrellaA Bulgarian secret agent used an umbrella just like this one on a London street to kill Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978. A standard umbrella was modified internally to inject poison into its target with the press of the trigger. In Markov's case, the umbrella contained a ricin pellet, which is next to impossible to trace.

The museum displays a replica, made specially in Moscow for the collection. Boghardt says that in 1991, a room full of similar deadly umbrellas was uncovered in Bulgaria.



Shoe with Heel TransmitterThroughout the 1960s and 1970s, Western diplomats in Eastern Europe avoided buying suits there, preferring to mail order clothing and shoes from the West. In Romania, the secret service used this to their advantage, working with the postal service to install a transmitter in shoe heels. Boghardt says that the recording device was discovered during a routine room sweep that revealed a signal, but the signal disappeared when all the diplomats left the room.



Lipstick Pistol"It's a classic," Boghardt says of this 4.5 millimeter single-shot weapon, presumably taken from a KGB agent in the mid-1960s. While it's unclear whether this dangerous "kiss of death" was ever used, a cyanide pistol was used for assassination in that era. These covert weapons are surviving examples of the "active measures" that were taken in this time period, unlike many of their intended targets.



Coat CameraThis little camera, Model F-21 issued by the KGB around 1970, was concealed in a buttonhole and has a release that the wearer presses from a pocket. Just squeeze the shutter cable and the fake button opens to capture an image.

Hidden, portable cameras could be used at public events such as political rallies without detection. Boghardt notes that the Spy Museum's director Peter Earnest, who worked for many years in the CIA on intelligence, has used one of these cameras.



Tree Stump BugThis tree stump bug used solar power to function continuously in a wooded area near Moscow during the early 1970s. The bug intercepted communications signals coming from a Soviet air base in the area and them beamed them to a satellite, which then sent the signals to a site in the United States. Solar power meant that no risky battery changes were needed. Nevertheless, the KGB discovered this green bug so the museum's copy is a replica.