Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations | Hacker News Reader

Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations

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For anyone interested in number stations I can only recommend checking out https://priyom.org/number-stations as far as I know it's one of the most complete online resources about them.

> 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 more German than the "Denglish" that is used today, but for terms that didn't already have an established German word, the English word was used, and I guess it was much the same in the Soviet Union).

If you browse through East German vintage computer manuals, there's a lot of English used for "special terms" like "BREAK", "HOME", "ESCAPE" etc.

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 user of hardware, and software derived from Western products, while civilians were left to use obsolete stuff from sixties, and seventies. Even mechanical computers were still around by the time of union's collapse.

Not sure why you're downvoted, as this was a fact. If a country is behind, the best way to catch up is to copy, there's nothing wrong with that (especially since it was illegal for Western companies to sell computer technology into the East, see COCOM [1]). And at least for basic elements like CPUs and other microchips it would have been foolish to create parts that are incompatible with the rest of the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul...

DEC even taped out their opinion: https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html

The successor to COMECON streisands the fun stuff: https://www.wassenaar.org/app/uploads/2019/12/WA-DOC-19-PUB-...

Even largely copied machines were typically adapted and 'localized' so I'm not sure this is really a much simpler or accurate explanation.

I've looked at some old soviet computing papers, and was surprised at how much english they used. I think, just like we all import "programming" keyboards, EN-US rapidly took over from EN-GB after the initial baby steps in computing.

http://ershov.iis.nsk.su/files/archive/fold0256/256_125.gif

"optimists learn english — pessimists, chinese"

this went on "realists study re-assembling a Kalashnikov".

There was lots of English, obviously, but also a lot of adaptation and modifications. Almost nothing (in wide use) was copied identically so I don't think this is a 'simple explanation' why this machine is the way it is. If I were to guess - this is a fairly late, specialized, small-run device made by a DDR space research institution. Maybe they were more geared up to make 'international' equipment. Maybe that's just the buttons they had on hand. The device was also intended to be used in 'friendly' countries so that might have been a factor. It's also possible this was considered more unobtrusive - on the museum site linked in the article there's a Soviet spy field radio with English markings, for instance, for use overseas.

So far @textfiles has traced that quote back to '65, give him another hour or so and I fully expect him to come up with a fragment from the dead sea scrolls or some fragment in Linear-A hewn into a rock.

Heh, the last bit - that the Chinese part is a later modification I think I could have told you myself. I wouldn't be too surprised if there's a pre-WW2 variant of some sort. But I doubt it's actually a 'quote' with an origin you can pinpoint any better than many such aphorisms like 'we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us'.

Googling the last bit took me to a reddit post in a socialism subreddit that questioned whether people actually said that so there's that sidemusement as well.

1961 now, still including the 'Chinese bit'. The Kalashnikov is the later modification I think.

https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1300882097150795779

You won't find any references to the Kalashnikov prior to 1948 ;)

There was a Czech one that didn't have Chinese of similar vintage and this kind of sentiment and the saying to go with it must have been pretty common around WW2+, when 'Chinese' would have made as little sense as Kalashnikov. But like I said, fundamentally it's not really a 'quote'.

It really makes sense for Germany in this edition: The optimists in West Germany learn Russian the pessimists - Chinese.

Damn if that means Linear-A will finally be deciphered, I'm going to sit here hitting F5 all night long.

Optimists learn egyptian. Pessimists learn assyrian. Realists learn horsemanship.

(TIL AK-47s are simpler than our assault rifles. Decent times: разборка, 8s, сборка, 15s, both, 30s)

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".

-As did I, chuckling at the 'built with foreign documentation' label affixed to many of the exhibits, in particular in the consumer electronics exhibition.

Chuckle turned to laugh when I looked at the replica H-bomb in the lobby before leaving - first, a label stating 'Replica. Does not contain explosives.'

Beneath this label? Another, stating 'built with foreign documentation.'

I probably should visit this museum the next time I come to Moscow for whatever reason.

This then seems to be specifically East German, since West German electronics were entirely self-sustained till the 90s or so, so the entire education and engineering used German and German only. (And oh-my, it's beautiful. Much more expressive than English EE jargon.) Computing, well they (Siemens, Nixdorf and some others) tried, and found their niches outside personal computing (Mainframes, industrial control systems).

Perhaps it was easier for them to get a hold on western/international electronics instead of West German stuff.

Interesting! I wonder what these were actually used for. Word on the street was communication with spies using a one-time-pad or something. I'm sure it was important or they wouldn't have built all this stuff for it. It wouldn't have been for the "what are those soviets up to now???" effect :D

And the more esoteric explanations like triggering preprogrammed behaviour (like the plot of Black Ops I refers to) are clearly nonsense. So I suppose it must have been something like that, the comms with spies thing.

After all the mysterious woodpecker only turned out oto be a poorly functioning OTH radar.

Maybe they were used for sending automated radio from lighthouses etc? Radio beacons.

I don't think so. Radio beacons are sending the same information constantly. And are well documented.

The numbers stations were sending seemingly random strings of numbers non-stop. They were a typical cold-war phenomenon shrouded in much mystery.

Oh. Ye well obviously each number sequence has to correspond to pre-written orders? And mostly they sent numbers that had no corresponding value to cover actual activity? Or maybe it was a joke to waste foreign intelligence resources?

There was a woman in East Berlin, who needed rescue. I can't remember if she worked with western intelligence, or if her husband did, but at any rate, she was in trouble. West Germany (or the Americans) decided to help her escape. At one point, she was given a pad. Told to turn her radio to a certain channel at a certain time of day. Write the numbers down and decode them with the pad.

Long story short, she and her son managed to get through one of the checkpoints into safety. Numbers stations were a key part of the plan because regular communications would have been impossible.

There's one example of how it was used. It's a little funny to me how the stations were quite mysterious to me, but they were just part of everyday life for others. A necessary chore.

Wish I had a link to the story. Heard it years ago. If this story rings a bell for anyone, and you have the link, I'd be forever grateful if you shared it. It stuck with me for not only being a good Cold War story, but also for the practical use of numbers stations.

Was it Garbriele Gast?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_Gast

> After agreeing to help, Gast very soon found herself sent on an intensive spycraft course, including hands-on training with the latest in covert communications equipment. She was given a Stasi code name, "Gisela", which came with a false passport and a new handbag, incorporating a well concealed secret compartment. Back home in Aachen, every Tuesday evening at the same time she tuned into a shortwave radio station from East Germany and carefully wrote down a long line of numbers, read out in a monotone, without further elaboration, by a "radio presenter". When she decrypted the messages from Schmidt she found some were instructions while others were simply encouraging love messages.

That sounds right. My memory is insisting it was an east-to-west rescue story, but memory is a very fallible thing. I very well may have reversed it from the actual story. Thanks very much for the link.

It was probably Helga Michnowski and her son Michael, later known as Ursula and Thomas Wagner: https://web.archive.org/web/20060213155527/http://www.myspys...

If you can read German, Werner Stiller, the Stasi agent who was involved in this story, wrote a detailed account in the following book: "Der Agent: Mein Leben in drei Geheimdiensten".

Also in German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vVYu2HaX10

An account in English from Werner Stiller's son: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y30yDu7_JBU

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

Cool, haven't haven't about that before - thanks for the link! :)

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

This is also how ATIS works - these are condition reports for airports that are broadcast on a loop. They tell pilots the active runway (if a small airport), surface weather, etc and any special information.

They're often fully synthesised, but might also have some manual recordings at the end.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_terminal_informati...

It makes sense that you wouldn't want to transmit messages only when your spies needed them, because that can leak information. So you constantly transmit random-looking information, and the spies have a special decrypter pad (either one time or multi use), and know that they can tune into the station at a certain time of day to receive instructions. If the instructions turn out to be jibberish after running it through the pad, then there are no new instructions. And you wouldn't want the transmission to require some esoteric equipment, whose mere ownership would indicate that the person is a spy.

Using one numbers station, you could do one-way transmits of information to hundreds of different spies with commodity radi hardware who know when to tune in to get their slice of information.

Would love to have a bit of numbers station-related hardware. The weirdness and mystery of These stations has teased me for decades.

These days, it can be done with a Raspberry Pi:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Broadcast-Your-Own-Number-S...

Just be aware that using the Pi to broadcast FM like that (without additional filtering hardware) produces a lot of noise (it doesn't just broadcast in the intended frequency, but also a lot of harmonics) and may interfere with legitimate signals.

Having said this, we used it for a challenge at a local conference last year to great amusement. :)

Note: “Gerät” is simply the German word for “Device”, “Machine” or “Equipment”.

Gadget.

The article points this out.

It does, but not very clearly, IMHO.

Reminds me of the Doener Geraet! :D

XRAY CLACKS OVERHEAD

seven seven six eight six

one seven fower two zero

six eight six one seven

fower six eight two zero

six seven six foxtrot six

fower two zero seven seven

seven two six foxtrot seven

fife six seven six eight

seven fower zero alfa xray

END

This is super interesting - I didn't know the machines that produced the sounds for many numbers stations is well known and actually pretty impressive for its time. Very cool!

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 for the right signal to kill some head of state.

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

Like this one.

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

The sparrow flies at midnight

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.

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".

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.

There was a group called "alt.anonymous.messages". E.g.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.anonymous.messag...

It was mainly meant to be integrated with anonymous remailers as a way of avoiding traffic analysis.

There was/is also a subreddit with a similar premise.

Recordings of dozens of numbers stations: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Conet_Project

The Conet Project: Disc 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S5Xbb9_kVA

That's cool.

I remember seeing a story about that weird Soviet radio station with the huge towers. Can't remember it exactly, but it was supposed to be a nuclear "dead man's switch," or something like that.

That was probably the Duga radar at chernobyl. It was an over the horizon radar (which never worked properly). There were more in other places but the Chernobyl one is the only one left because of its location in the exclusion zone. Nothing as sinister as a dead man's switch, it was meant to provide early missile / bomber warning, but by the time it was operational it was already superseded by satellites. And it had many operational issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar

You’re probably thinking of UVB-76, also known as “the buzzer”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

MAME emulation coming in 3, 2, 1...

Here's a javascript version:

https://github.com/TomHetmer/sprach

Are there any stations still broadcasting?

Pretty sure there are. The amateur radio and SDR communities tend to be into them, IIRC.

Some are. Perhaps the most famous is UVB-76[0]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76

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