Encryption Project

My niche online radio show, Number Station that I started a few months ago broadcasted it's 22nd show last weekend. I'm still really enjoying it as it has started to get me talking more about topics I'm interested in rather than just scanning the bands to pick up any amateur radio and shortwave transmissions. I'm taking a break from it over the summer and normal service will resume again soon but in the meantime, you can listen to archived recordings and explore more of what the website has to offer here.

One particular topic that is proving popular with listeners, is the subject of Numbers Stations. I've been slowly piecing together elements from previous projects of mine to help people put together their own Number Station for fun here, where information about these stations, where to listen for them and how to broadcast your own signals can be found. I also touched upon encryption and had a go at writing my own Enigma machine to allow people to encrypt and broadcast their own secretive messages.

As encryption is currently at the forefront of things, I went along to one of my favourite museums The Royal Signals Museum and hunted out the Enigma machine they have on display there. The amount of trouble I had when producing a virtual version here was bad enough, to think how the managed it from a mechanical, analogue perspective is unbelievable.

Other highlights of the museum include Pigeon 2709.

But what I thought was really clever was something I spotted in their Spies section, called the Squirt Bar. This was a means to quickly transmit Morse code by first building your message out of conductive and non-conductive rings. A conductive 'reader' could then be run along the column, transmitting as it went.