NADCOMM Papers and Writings

Nadcomm Home

Papers:

Nadcomm History
NFKM Radio Central
Understand ASCII
Timeline
ASCII 67
Five Unit Code
Quick Brown Fox
Hot Line
PreDivestiture

Old Inventory List
Old Look For Items

Newsletters:

Newsletter 1
Newsletter 2
Newsletter 3
Newsletter 4

 

Nadcomm - Items we're looking for ---------------------

  1. Model 10 Page Printer, and/or documentation on this, the first Teletype.

  2. Model 37, any model, no documentation necessary.
  3. Model 38, wide carriage, no documentation necessary.
  4. Type 2 Dataspeed Sender and/ or Receiver, no documentation necessary.
  5. Type 4 Dataspeed Sender and/ or Receiver, no documentation necessary.
  6. Type 5 Dataspeed Sender and/ or Receiver, no documentation necessary.
  7. CX Reader, with or without base
  8. Any portion of a teletypewriter selective calling system, especially the station selector itself.
  9. 100A Key Telephone System
  10. 101A or 101B Dataset for Model 15, 19, or 28 Dial TWX service.
  11. Model 14 R/T Cabinet, or portion of
  12. Model 28 R/T Cabinet, or portion of
  13. 911 Data Test Set
  14. 921 Data Test Set
  15. 903 Data Test Set
  16. 904 Data Test Set
  17. Dataspeed Oscilloscope

Thanks again for any leads. We are a California Not-For-Profit, Public Benefit Museum. We can provide tax deductible receipts for donations. Values are set at approximately 50% of original price. I have many pricing books from Teletype Corporation and a cross reference for military equipment designations.

In the 28 line the standard store-and-forward unit was the R-T stand; however the LRXD was made to the same form factor as the FRXD so it could be a direct replacement - besides the regular XD, there is a two-headed XD that was used, mostly by the military I think, as a sort of cheap two-channel time-division multiplex. The distributor faceplate had the code segments cut in half, and sent the character from one head on the early segments and the other character on the late segments. Receiving this was just a matter of fiddling with the range finder on the printer or reperf so that it sampled early or late in each bit cell, and hence copied only one of the two characters. Another two-headed XD is the Vernam cipher; one head carries the message tape and the other carries the one-time-key tape, and the two characters are exclusive-ORed to generate the encrypted signal. Then the same machine can be used for decryption by putting the tape containing the encrypted signal in one head and a copy of the key tape in the other.

There were several packages in the World War II period, consisting of an approx. 30" cube cabinet with an XD and Model 14 reperf on top. (132A1 comes to mind, but may be completely wrong) One of these was simply the tape equipment and the cabinet held a couple of repeaters so the thing could be run neutral or polar or whatever. Another thing in a similar appearing cabinet had an electronic timer that supplied start and stop pulses - intended to synchronize with tape sending on a radio circuit and correct for mutilated start and stop pulses. I have often wondered how effective this was. A third one was for the Vernam cipher sort of machine. The box held the relays that did the mixing; and on top there could be a key generator box to take the place of the one-time tape.

Also from WWII period are the AN/FGC-1 FSK converter and its companion AN/FRR-3 receiver, each in a seven-foot tall relay rack. A number of hams used these things in the early days of RTTY, tho the size and weight were always obstacles.

Speaking of the Vernam cipher, I've read that Vernam or some people who came after him had a key generator that used several endless tape loops, each of a relatively prime length compared to the others. And that Wm. F. Friedman was able to break that encryption; it wasn't strong enough. With a true one-time tape the encryption is unbreakable, but there is the problem that you need as much key as you have message, and you have to get the key tapes to the two points that wish to communicate. The tape loops scheme was to try to cut down on the amount of key needed.

 Nadcomm CMA USS Rotanin TCGS HEM