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Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

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Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#41

Post by Todd »

jacquesm wrote: post #32

I remember these. The pronunciation of 'five' ("fuennef") alway stood out to me. Listening to the wav file of the voice it's there exactly as I remember it. There were a lot of weird radio stations back in the day, plenty of them for espionage and command-and-control purposes. Sleeper agents were - and probably still are - a thing. Makes you wonder if there are still people lying in wait living normal lives waiting f…

This may have been to disambiguate between similar sounding phonemes. English phonetic alphabets used for radio had pronunciations like 'tree' for 3 and 'niner' for 9.

Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#42

Post by 082349872349872 »

gspr wrote: post #33
jacquesm wrote: post #32

I remember these. The pronunciation of 'five' ("fuennef") alway stood out to me. Listening to the wav file of the voice it's there exactly as I remember it. There were a lot of weird radio stations back in the day, plenty of them for espionage and command-and-control purposes. Sleeper agents were - and probably still are - a thing. Makes you wonder if there are still people lying in wait living normal lives waiting f…

Maybe instead of an AM broadcast from a big clunky transmitter, they're waiting for a precisely worded seemingly innocuous HN comment…

The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.

Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#43

Post by NelsonMinar »

jacquesm wrote: post #32

I remember these. The pronunciation of 'five' ("fuennef") alway stood out to me. Listening to the wav file of the voice it's there exactly as I remember it. There were a lot of weird radio stations back in the day, plenty of them for espionage and command-and-control purposes. Sleeper agents were - and probably still are - a thing. Makes you wonder if there are still people lying in wait living normal lives waiting f…

The "zwo" for 2 also stuck out. It's a common variant but my understanding is it's not the most proper word. As someone else said, maybe partly chose for phonetic distinctness.

Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#44

Post by grishka »

baybal2 wrote: post #20
flohofwoe wrote: post #19

> What I find quite surprising: The keyboard and output of the device mostly uses English words. A bit unexpected for a device developed in eastern Germany for use in the Soviet Union; I would rather have expected Russian there. This isn't all that surprising, the Lingua Franca for electronics and software development in Eastern Germany was also English, not Russian (or rather a mix of German and English, with much m…

A much simpler explanation of the phenomenon is that a lion share of digital electronics made in the union was a direct copypaste down to documentation, and UI Russian language based domestic computing industry existed, but it has stopped developing in early seventies, and by eighties was behind hopelessly, despite being quite well adapted in civilian use. Funnily, it was the union's military that was the biggest use…

In the 80s, if you had a lot of money, you could import an actual PC. Or so I was told.

There apparently also were ZX Spectrum clones that no one could afford. Also the Agat computer, a slightly incompatible Apple II clone that used a real imported 6502 because USSR wasn't able to produce its own one.

Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#45

Post by flir »

grishka wrote: post #44
baybal2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much simpler explanation of the phenomenon is that a lion share of digital electronics made in the union was a direct copypaste down to documentation, and UI Russian language based domestic computing industry existed, but it has stopped developing in early seventies, and by eighties was behind hopelessly, despite being quite well adapted in civilian use. Funnily, it was the union's military that was the biggest use…

In the 80s, if you had a lot of money, you could import an actual PC. Or so I was told. There apparently also were ZX Spectrum clones that no one could afford. Also the Agat computer, a slightly incompatible Apple II clone that used a real imported 6502 because USSR wasn't able to produce its own one.

I wandered around the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow a couple of decades ago, thinking, at so many of the technology exhibits, "that looks reeeeeeaaally familiar".

Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#46

Post by DasIch »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #43
jacquesm wrote: post #32

I remember these. The pronunciation of 'five' ("fuennef") alway stood out to me. Listening to the wav file of the voice it's there exactly as I remember it. There were a lot of weird radio stations back in the day, plenty of them for espionage and command-and-control purposes. Sleeper agents were - and probably still are - a thing. Makes you wonder if there are still people lying in wait living normal lives waiting f…

The "zwo" for 2 also stuck out. It's a common variant but my understanding is it's not the most proper word. As someone else said, maybe partly chose for phonetic distinctness.

It's indeed used for phonetic distinctness.

The German word for 2 is "zwei", which is relatively close to and even rhymes with the word for 3 "drei". "Zwo" is used to make it easier to distinguish the two.

Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#47

Post by ahartmetz »

DasIch wrote: post #46
NelsonMinar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "zwo" for 2 also stuck out. It's a common variant but my understanding is it's not the most proper word. As someone else said, maybe partly chose for phonetic distinctness.

It's indeed used for phonetic distinctness. The German word for 2 is "zwei", which is relatively close to and even rhymes with the word for 3 "drei". "Zwo" is used to make it easier to distinguish the two.

"Fünnef" is / was(?) also used on radio for phonetic distinctness. In English there are "tree" and "niner".

Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#48

Post by vajrabum »

I seem to remember seeing something of this sort of thing on Usenet in one of the alt groups maybe 25 years ago. Just blocks of numbers if I'm remembering correctly. I suppose that was less likely to be a government and more likely to be college kids playing at spies but who knows.

Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

#49

Post by aesthesia »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #30
m4rtink wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you could use that device to report telemetry from say an automated weather station. Spoken words can be probably propagated better over a noisy channel. Task an intern to listen to this every day & compile a report with the weather data inside and bam, daily weather report from an automated station. :)

Until not-that-long-ago, the weather service did have radio weather reports broadcast using an automated, synthesized voice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Weather_Radio#Voices

I looked at the link because I was surprised that they had stopped. Turns out the stations are still transmitting.
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