Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

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I've taken this tour, the amount of preservation and history down there is amazing.

One of the most interesting things was a room that was explained to everyone as "Churchill's private bathroom". It was a small closet and the door even had a "FREE/ENGAGED" lock on it, taken from an airplane lavatory. You wouldn't dare enter or knock on a bathroom door that said ENGAGED, especially one belonging to Churchill would you?

http://www.timetravelturtle.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/L...

Behind the door was Churchill's SIGSALY terminal, a private encrypted voice line between the UK and terminals at the US Pentagon and White House.

http://www.timetravelturtle.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/L...

SIGSALY was the descendent of the Bell Labs "Voder", which was the first attempt at electronically synthesized human speech.

https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-fi...

1939 Voder Demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAyrmm7vv0

The Voder eventually gave birth to the Vocoder and other developments beyond.

... the door even had a "FREE/ENGAGED" lock on it, taken from an airplane lavatory.

In the 40s? I'm betting it came from a train. Some phone booths from those days, the sort you might find in a hotel rather than on the street, also had similar mechanisms.

> You wouldn't dare enter or knock on a bathroom door that said ENGAGED, especially one belonging to Churchill would you?

Eh...I would. A huge part of my family was wiped out because of Churchill's machinations leading to the Bengal famine. My grandfather was able to move south with the sacrifice of his siblings.

Churchill's actions put him in the grey area for me.

Thanks for saying that. I get tired of the constant lionisation of Churchill.

I remember my father, who was in the RAF in WW2, pointing out that a lot of people in the UK hated Churchill - they respected him as a war leader but didn't want him running the country after the war as it would mean a return to the pre-war status quo. This perhaps explains who he wasn't elected as PM in the 1945 general election - picking a Labour government under Clement Attlee that delivered things like the NHS.

I was talking more about his staff down in the CWR during wartime.

But I hear you.

Voder is amazing. I remember when I was a kid finding out that the BBC micros had speach synth, and it sounded a lot like that. It seemed at the time to be more advanced than I had learned to expect from other gadgets.

I've done this and wholeheartedly agree. My other tip: Ottawa's diefenbunker.

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