German WW2 code machine found on eBay
bbc.com
bbc.com
Here's my overhaul of the Teletype Corp. version.[1] Here's a Lorenz version someone else has.[2] Here's Bletchley Park's set, with the crypto unit and the teleprinter.[3]
After I got my first Model 14, I had the paper tape they need made by a company in China. The minimum order was 500 rolls, so I sometimes sell paper tape to museums. (I tried US manufacturers first. Either they didn't want a small order, wanted a very high price, or the edge quality of the paper was so bad the tape would jam.)
[1] http://www.aetherltd.com/refurbishing14.html [2] http://www.teleprinter.net/english/inhalt/t2.shtml [3] http://cryptomuseum.com/crypto/lorenz/sz40/img/301491/000/fu...
Now that's a Baudot/ITA2 character set variation I haven't seen. There's already USTTY, ITA2, weather symbols, fractions (⅛, ¼, ⅜, etc., for stocks), versions with £ instead of #, and versions with a pilcrow. (¶). But I've never heard of a double lightning bolt symbol.
Unicode has a single lightning bolt (Stack Overflow cannot handle this) up in the astral planes with the new emoji. But no double lightning bolt. I suppose a request for that now has to go into the Unicode consortium.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/29/hitlers-top-secre...
TNMoC has some WW2 machines (most importantly Heath Robinson and Colossus) but they also have pretty much every other computer imaginable, with some of the proper historical stuff actually functional, and more BBC Micros than I've seen since school.
"It looks like an electric motor in black casing with two shafts on each side, which drive the gears of the Lorenz machine," explains volunteer John Wetter.
Volunteers hope the public will look out for it and if all else fails are hoping someone might want to build them a new one until they find it.
If it's just a dual-shaft motor with nothing else special about it, fortunately those are widely available:
http://www.surpluscenter.com/New-Arrivals/1600-RPM-115-VAC-D...
She could have taken it to the local Antique store and had it evaluated, or asked the museum about it, but instead did what many do, throw it up on Ebay and see if anyone wants it. She's happy, the museum is happy, that really is all that counts here.
Further, though, there are some practical considerations. If they'd shown her appreciation, future dialogue about how it got there, clues to the motor etc should be easier to develop- they obviously asked, but no reason to potentially burn any bridges.
I have related experience with finding items to add to my DEC VAX collection. I've found equipment that would sell for a premium to one of the folks who maintain old computers for companies, and the owner has offered it up to me for a few dollars. I always tell people in that situation what we're looking at and often they are just glad to see it going to a good home rather than wasting away in their closet/basement/storereoom. Sometimes they will decide to try to sell it for more elsewhere.
In this particular case, the historical value is high, but the number of people who would pay more than 9.5 pounds for it is probably in the single digits. Remember it's only a part of a larger artifact. Further, they found it on ebay so others had the opportunity to see it and bid on it. In the past I've found that things really do find their "market" price on ebay and sometimes that is very different from what either the seller or the buyer thinks should be the market price.
Finally there is the question of "value." It would be fun and cool to have an ancient encryption device, but what is that "worth" to you? So many times I've met people who kept old computers when they were enjoying them (high value) and then discarding them after the excitement/fun has worn off. Cleaning out and disposing an in-law or relative's estate after a long life is also really useful for internalizing cash value vs sentimental value.
Really the best you can hope for is that both parties are satisfied with the transaction. This person in the story might be looking forward to visiting the artifact in a museum some day.
I'm not trying to argue that there aren't people who would exploit an imbalance of information in a market to profit at the expense of others. Hedge funds are full of people like that. I'm just saying that from what we've heard in this story, both parties seem happy with the transaction. The BBC could always follow up with a phone call to the owner and say "If you knew what it was would you have asked the museum for more money?" Only then do we have enough information to consider whether or not the museum was being exploitive.
Interestingly, I just remembered that we in Denmark have a law called "Danefæ"[0], which states that the government has claim on all found "treasure". Here you can read what is "danefæ" (i.e. claimed) http://natmus.dk/salg-og-ydelser/museumsfaglige-ydelser/dane.... As the law is mostly written with ancient, dug-up items in mind a contraption such as the one in question would not be covered. It's interesting though, how it would solve the moral dilemma.
It's surprisingly hard to find information on this in english; do the states/UK have a similar setup? (your DEC VAX collection obviously wouldn't be covered (yet))
[0] http://natmus.dk/salg-og-ydelser/museumsfaglige-ydelser/dane...
Offhand it would seem that many (all?) profits made in open exchanges proceed from some knowledge advantage on the part of one party—or at least originate from a calculated risk taken in light of some knowledge.
As a 'user story'; "I work in the field of <something>-ics, and suspect that <some products|raw materials> in <some industry> will be much <more|less> available in the coming years, so I'm going to go <long|short> on related stocks."
I don't think many would say I'm obliged to inform the selling parties of my reasoning in some interest of fairness. (I'm not including the edge case of insider trading, but run of the mill, hard-earned expertise.)
And at a more mundane level of analysis, c'mon—who doesn't know to at least do some web (text & image) searching before selling off something interesting (complex, artistic, hand-crafted, etc.) that you know very little about?
I bought a music box at a garage sale for bout $10. It seemed like a good deal at the time. A few months later I noticed a label on the bottom so I did some research and discovered that the same item was selling for around $1,000 on eBay. Should I now go track the owner down and tell her that she should have asked for more money?
Counter that with the time I found a Coach trinket at another garage sale for $1.50 and I pointed out to the homeowner that an old gf had bought the same thing from the Coach store for $35. Her answer was "well, I guess you're getting a good deal then."
In the end, once the seller and buyer agrees on a price, it's hard for me to see how that's screwing someone over.
You didn't know. It was a trade among equals. This was different. That said, there are some situations where it's considered OK to rip people off. Finance works like that. But I would've thought that museums had slightly higher standards of conduct than Goldman Sachs...
At least here, for a transaction to be valid, both parties must be in the same kind of conditions, regarding to the knowledge of the thing (if one does not know what the object is, they should explain the other, not just take advantage of the situation). This was clearly not the case.
"It may also be sued annulment or amendment of legal acts when one party exploiting the need, lightness or inexperience of the other, obtained through them an obviously disproportionate and unjustified financial advantage."
Spending just a few seconds in google, it seems that it is the same in other countries: "When anyone, exploiting the sum ignorance, notorious inexperience or extreme misery of another, obtains an excessive profit that is clearly disproportionate to what he in turn agrees, the injured party is entitled to seek rescission of the contract, and if it impossible equitable reduction obligation."
But of course, it all depends of the law of the place. If that that's OK in Essex, well... too bad for the one selling this object. And good for the museum taking advantage of that opportunity (even if it may sound a little bit unfair). At least this machine will be in good hands.
In any case, it'd be nice if they stop bragging about that.
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Edit: And according to wikipedia[1]:
In English Law, "unilateral mistake is where only one party to a contract is mistaken as to the terms or subject-matter. The courts will uphold such a contract unless it was determined that the non-mistaken party was aware of the mistake and tried to take advantage of the mistake"
IANAL, but in this case, I think there was obviously one party that didn't know what the object was, and another that did know and was taking advantage of the situation ("It was advertised as a telegram machine ", "keep the change" and all that).
I mean if you're going to be all steampunk, at least interface with a USB-C connector and use the machine to live tweet the announcement.
but you know it is real gold and say "okay here's $10"
is that honest and moral?
The wheel with the black and white bars is a centrifugal governor. The speed is adjustable, and you use a special tuning fork with a shutter to calibrate the speed. This is a standard Teletype motor feature for when you can't rely on AC power line frequency.
It's still not clear if this find included the crypto unit, or just the teleprinter. If they actually found a crypto unit, this is a big deal. Those were very rare.
[1] http://cryptomuseum.com/crypto/lorenz/sz40/img/301491/000/fu...
Kind of a dick move.