Dictaphone Used to Transcribe German Code During War

1922

SOLVED GERMAN RADIO SPEED

Operators' Ingenuity in Use of Dictaphone Aided in Intercepting Code Messages

On a bench in the Bois de Bologne in company with mademoiselle, or in running or crawling toward the Boche's trench, the American doughboy couldn't be equalled for speed When it came time, however, to pass secret radio messages, where no particular, danger was involved either for the sender or the receiver, the Germans seemed to be able to make it a trifle snappier.

The aforegoing is apropos of the statement that German code messages were sent so fast that radio operators of the allies, who weren't supposed to be playing, anyway, were not able to take them. It was not long, though, until what the allied operators lacked in speed they made up in ingenuity. A certain operator, by the triangulation method, found that messages were being sent from a station in Germany to another in German East Africa.

After several weeks of work, this operator took a dictaphone to his station and set the blank wax cylinder in motion at a rapid rate of speed while a German message was on its way to Africa. After the message had been "caught" in the wax cylinder the cylinder was placed on a transcribing machine and then run so slowly that the mysterious dots and dashes could be taken with ease. Later, the message was decoded and its secret known by the allies. The knowledge derived from this operator's experiment is now employed in transcribing press messages from Europe to America.

—The Pointer, Riverdale/Dolton, Illinois, July 21, 1922, page 7.