Telegraph & Morse Code

WAVES recruting poster

Even though they had been known already for one hundred years telegraph and morse code were, in conjunction with radio, the most common methods of comunication during war time...In some cases there were entire units dedicated to the listening and the receiving of messages like for the GCHQ and the SIGINT in the UK,the FRA in Sweden, the NSA in the USA or the AT in Netherlands.
To be more precise the telegraph is way older than the morse code, there were in fact already multiple examples of this device:

• 4th century. BC, greek hydarulic telegraph descibed by Aeneas Tacticus, and in the 3rd century by the hystorian Polybious
• In the1792 the optical telegraph made its entrance in the world technological scene thanks to the french Claude Chappe and it was a precursor of its electrical version.
• It is 1832 is the when the electrical telegraph makes  its first steps into history, with the prototype presented by Schilling von Canstatt.  From that moments a lot of different evolutions of the Electrical telegraph were presented, like the Gauss-Weber (1933) or the Cooke & Weatstone (1837) 
•  But a the gratest step was made by Samuel Morse, with the development of the electro-magnetic telegraph, whose patent was registered by Morse itself on June, 20th 1940 and improved in the following years, because he didn't create just the machine, but he also introduced a specifically designed comunication method: The Morse Code. It consisted in the rappresentation of letters and numbers with a series of dots and lines properly alternated as presented in the photo below, and in the one under it (in a more grafical way which makes it easier to learn). The disposition of the characters differs in base of the language considered, but few rules stay the same, like the relative time that passes between the different letters (3 time units) or between the words (7 time units), where the time unit is defined by the gap between the different elements of the same letter.

First Patent of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph by Samuel Morse

The Morse Code Alphabet The Morse Code in Graphical Version

Art by Ward Cunningham

"The situation is now stable, the Adenoid occupies all of St. James's, the historic buildings are no more, Government offices have been relocated, but so dispersed that communication among them is highly uncertain—postmen are being snatched off of their rounds by stiff-pimpled Adenoid tentacles of fluorescent beige, telegraph wires are apt to go down at any whim of the Adenoid."

"Shots from uphill—then, maybe from Närrisch in reply, a burst of automatic fire. Otto
is holding his Hilde close. "Anybody read Morse Code?" the girl next to Slothrop wants to
know, "because there's been a light going over there, see, at the tip of that little island? for
a few minutes now." It's three dots, dot, dot, three more dots. Over and over.
"Hmm, SEES," ponders Felix.
"Maybe they're not dots," sez the tenor-sax player, "maybe they're dashes.""

[Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon]


"In Napoléon’s time nothing could move faster than a horse,’ said Erik. ‘Today we have motor
vehicles and wireless telegraphy. Modern communications have enabled us to succeed where
Napoléon failed."

"The signals were in Morse Code, but the dots and dashes of naval signals translated into five-digit
number groups, each representing a letter, word or phrase in a code book. The apparently random
numbers were relayed by secure cable to teleprinters in the basement of the Old Administration
Building. Then the difficult part began: cracking the code.""

[Winter of the WorldI, Ken Follet]

This post argument is connected to the previous posts Secret Services & National Oganizations and SIS, aka MI6...A little bit of History, but also to the one related to Radio (Secret Services & Radio)

As usual for more specific information ccheck out both the links and the sources reported below...

Sources:

Multiples articles on both Theoretical (Foundamentals of Electromagnetism ) and Practical (Railway or Military Telegraphs) arguments
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tel/telhom.htm

Other sources:

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~smatei/435/techwiki/index.php?title=Morse_Code_and_the_Telegraph
http://cw.hfradio.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/morse/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy
http://www.nearfieldcommunicationnfc.net/nfc-telegraph-history.html

Entire Collection of Chipher and Other

As it is well known secret services are a very well diffused practise, especially useful during war, or more generally in periods of international tension.. In the link below you can find an interesting collection of photos of devices used by various agencies in the world during the 20th century, such as chiper machines, spy equipement, radio, telegraph machines etc...

http://ciphermachines.com/photos/index.php




The argument of this post is related to the ones contained in Secret Services & Spy Sets, Secret Services & Patents: The Enigma Machine, Secret Services & The Enigma Machine, Secret Services & Radio, Secret Services & Cracking Enigma: The Bombe, Secret Services & Bombe 2.0, Telegraph & Morse Code, Minicameras 2.0 and in Minicameras...micro optics at the service of the spies

Secret Services & Spy Sets

Spy sets...I think that they're, actually, one of the most significant evidence of the technological progress of the time spell considered, which in this case is the second world war, because a spy,or more generally speaking a secret agent, doesn't have any certainty about what is going to happen to him, so he needs the best stuff to help him face all the possible scenarios and to work and report even in the most unprobable conditions...I know that now all these problems would make us laugh because of the incredible advance in tech in the last 20, but, at the time still they were a quite compelling issue to solve.

1. Spy Radio and Receiver Sets: once again the main problem was to permit spies abroad to comunicate safely and as frequently as possible...To achieve this result all nations developed their own radio, like the RSZ, developped by US Navy around 1943, a small self-contained receiver with an external battery pack in a similar housing, that could be carried on the chest in a canvas case with two pockets; or the URSS Elektron Radio Set, characterized by a output power of 50W, suitable for ranges up to 3000 km and one of the first true spy radios to used a burst encoder in order to minimize the risk of interception and detection by the enemy (LPI). Other examples are: from UK, the Type A Mk. III (A3), a small spy radio set, manufactured by the Marconi Company in the UK in 1944, close towards the end of WWII. It was intended for clandestine operations on occupied territory, by agents, special forces and resistance units (S.O.E); or from Japan the incredible 94-6, a miniature single-valve portable transceiver that was used during WWII, as part of a series of Army radios.
   
2. Covert Cameras or Minicameras: we've already spoke about this item in the posts  Minicameras...micro optics at the service of the spies and Minicameras 2.0, but if you wanna go further go on and check the web page in the crypto museum dedicated to them
3. Covert Recorders:
   
   high-precision portable minature wire audio tape recorder, which could have been easily hidden under everyday cloathing. As a matter of fact this kind of Covert Equipement, like recorders and, especially bugs, belong more to the post WWII period, around 1950 and following decades, in fact their structure is much different from their precedent, because there were different needs and purposes which must had been considered during their fulfilment. Two  exemplar models are the Nagra SN (in the photo), introduced in the 1970, used by both CIA and Stasi and capable of recording in sync with a videocamera, and the Protona Minifon Attaché, a miniature tape recorder, using a magnetic tape which was organized into cassetes produced by the Protona GmbH, since the Philips Compact Cassettes weren't yet available.
4. Burst Encoders: device that allows messages to be stored on a recording medium first. The pre-recorded message is then sent over the air at very high speed using a play-back device. Many solutions were developed, using a variety of media, such as paper, audio tape, metal tape, mechanical drums and even photographic film.   Messages that are sent this way often sound like a short tone or burst, which is why it is called a Burst Transmission.
   
5. Bugs: Once again we're making a step forward in history, of 15-20 years more or less, but still its important to define them as a foundamental element of the spy set. One of the earliest sample of this incredible piece of technology is the KBG bug, a small radio bug, introduced around 1964 , with dimensions 72x23x10 mm, so  really small, as it can be inferred by the photo below... but there were smaller and more sophisticated prototypess such as the PS-006, a bollpiont bug developped in the 80's and with a small radious of action, only 25 m due to the small voltage
   

Click on the light blue words to link with pages where you can find more specific description about each single prototype and examples of others similar devices.

Sources:
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/spy/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_probability_of_intercept

Secret Services & Radio

Then at the fall of Paris, a radio transmitting station was set up on the cliff, antennas aimed at the Continent, themselves heavily guarded and their landlines back mysteriously over the downs to the house patrolled night and day by dogs specially betrayed, belted, starved into reflex leaps to kill, at any human approach.


With funding available for all manner of radars, magic 

torpedoes, aircraft and missiles, where was Pointsman in the scheme of things?

"Tides, radio interference, damned little else. There is no way for changes out there to produce changes here."

On the other side of the arch is a Russian jeep with a couple officers, one talking earnestly into the mike of his radio set, and the air between quickens with spoken Russian at the speed of light weaving a net to catch Slothrop.


At first he helped out in the propulsion group. No one was specializing yet. That came later, when the bureaus and paranoias moved in, and the organization charts became plan-views of prison cells. Kurt Mondaugen, whose field was radio electronics, could come up with solutions to cooling problems.


The Russians even had a guard posted on board for a while, till the Anubian ladies vamped them off long enough to single up all lines—and so the last long reprise of Polish homeland was on, across these water-meadows of the north, radio messages following them in clear one day and code the next, an early and shapeless situation, dithering between executioner's silence and the Big Time.

Russian transmissions come crackling out of ship's radio, and the static blows like sheets of rain.


The idea was always to carry along a fixed quantity, A. Sometimes you'd use a Wìen bridge, tuned to a certain frequency A{, whistling, heavy with omen, inside the electric corridors while outside, according to the tradition in these matters, somewhere a quantity B would be gathering, building, as the Rocket gathered speed. So, up till assigned Brennschluss velocity, "v ," electric shocked as any rat into following this very narrow mazeway of clear space—yes, radio signals from the ground would enter the Rocket body, and by reflex—literally by electric signal traveling a reflex arc—the control surfaces twitch, to steer you back on course the instant you'd begin to wander off.


But the blacks don't know what else Närrisch knew:
(a) there was a radio link from the ground to the S-Gerät but not the other way round,
(b) there was an interference problem between a servo-actuator and a special oxygen line running aft to the device from the main tank,
(c) Weissmann not only coordinated the S-Gerät project at Nordhausen, but also commanded the battery that fired Rocket 00000.
Total espionage. Bit by bit this mosaic is growing. Tchitcherine, bureauless, carries it around in his brain. Every chip and scrap belongs. More precious than Ravenna, something goes erecting against this starch-colored sky. . . .
Radio link + oxygen = afterburner of some kind.


The tail-section group has been on the radio all morning, trying to get a position fix, if the skies will only clear. So the assembly of the 00001 is occurring also in a geographical way.

[Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon]


Werner had been only fourteen years old then, but he was now eighteen, he worked at the Air Ministry, he hated the Nazis even more, and he had a powerful radio transmitter and a code book. He was resourceful and courageous, taking dreadful risks and gathering priceless information. And Volodya was his contact.


On his desk was a decrypt from the radio section, the German words pencilled letter by letter under the code groups. The message was from Werner.


Anticipating the outbreak of war, Volodya had long ago equipped his Berlin spies with clandestine radios and code books. Now it was more vital than ever that the handful of brave anti-Nazis should continue to pass information to the Soviets. Before leaving he had destroyed all records of their names and addresses, which now existed only in his head.


At home, Chuck had not said much about the navy, no doubt because their parents were still angry with him for not going to Harvard. But alone with Woody he opened up a bit. ‘Hawaii is great, but I’m really disappointed to have a shore job,’ he said. ‘I joined the navy to go to sea.’
‘What are you doing, exactly?’
‘I’m part of the Signal Intelligence Unit. We listen to radio messages, mainly from the Imperial Japanese Navy.’
‘Aren’t they in code?’
‘Yes, but you can learn a lot even without breaking the codes. It’s called traffic analysis. A sudden increase in the number of messages indicates that some action is imminent. And you learn to recognize patterns in the traffic. An amphibious landing has a distinctive configuration of signals, for example.’


We can also figure out where the signal originated, by triangulation. Given locations and the call signs, we can build up a pretty good picture of where most of the ships of the Japanese navy are, even if we can’t read the messages.’
‘So we know where they are, and what direction they’re taking, but not what their orders are,’ said Gus.
‘Frequently, yes.’
‘But if they wanted to hide from us, all they would have to do is impose radio silence.’
‘True,’ said Vandermeier. ‘If they go quiet, this whole operation becomes useless, and we are well and truly fucked up the ass.’
[...]
Gus frowned. ‘Radio silence. Has that ever happened before?’
‘Yes. Aircraft carriers go quiet when they return to home waters. So we assume that’s the explanation this time.’


Chuck was assigned to the radio room, a sensible posting that made use of his experience in
handling signals.

[Winter of the World, Ken Follet]

As it appears from the quotes extracted from the books radio had a great importance during World War II under multiple aspects, like checking enemies position (triangulation and radar) and actions (traffic analysis and signal configurations), controling the coasts, comunicating with other meber of the army or with a Soviet spy in Berlin and to control a missile and keep it on the route. There where though few problems about interferences and the fact that it can be easily tracked down.

If you wanna know more about history and functioning of Marconi's creature  check the links below:
http://s194214.blogspot.it/2013/05/la-radio.html (italian version by Alessia Rosace, 'Tecnologia e Comunicazione' blog)
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio (english version - Wikipedia page on the radio as a technology feature)



About triangulation...in the link below you can find a video about triangulation method and its aplications in time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYBbVNpMlUU


The image presents the general idea if this tracking technique










In the links below you can find more info regarding the Traffic Analysis:
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/tech_journals/intro_traffic_analysis.pdf (NSA introduction document)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis (Wikipedia presentation of its applications in the military field during WWI and WWII)

Woman radio Operator during war times