Vintage Audio Activities...

[mickthemaverick]

Would your Bush have looked something like this Chris?

BFTW

We had a very similar one given to us but oddly we didn't have a car!!

[white exec]

That was exactly it!!!

And this was the BBC build-it-yourself project, from 1959...
http://www.daveysradios.org.uk/bbcfocus.html

[myglaren]

Would your Bush have looked something like this Chris?



We had a very similar one given to us but oddly we didn't have a car!!

My dad put one of those, but a blue fascia, in his new Morris 1100.

[CitroJim]

That's magic Chris

Back in 1960 the OC71 was cutting edge technology

I have a great affinity for the OC71... For a major part of my career I used to carry out repairs to a certain variety of cypher machine which was almost entirely built around the OC71...It had several hundred of them forming discreet digital logic circuits across about 40 plug-in printed circuit boards...

I got to know them very, very well... Its code name was that of a luxury British car...

I'm sure a bit of digging around by those skilled in searching the Internet will soon reveal what it was

[mickthemaverick]

Initial bit of digging did not find the answer but I did come across this site which may help the less well educated understand the valves:
https://colinjs.com/elec/valves/valves.htm

[white exec]

I think this book had a long-lasting effect on lots of youngsters. My Dad (a electrical engineer and designer) gave it to me as a birthday present when I was about 8.

It contains (by today's standards) some literally hair-raising experiments and projects, one actually involving a Wimshurst machine* and an Röntgen (x-ray) tube!

We did, though, together build a good few of the items, including telephones, a morse-tape recorder, and a rather good electric motor.

Found a pdf of the book here:
http://rawfire.torche.com/~opcom/tbe/th ... rician.pdf

* There was a Wimshurst machine in our shed. Dad had built it some time in the 1930s. He'd used a couple of 12" shellac gramophone records for the discs, but, containing carbon, they were conductively leaky, and so the output from the machine was not good. He'd always meant to replace the discs with proper glass ones, but never got round to it. Neither did I (following in footsteps again). We also had a couple of Leyden jars, iirc, and a rather shocking high-voltage trembler, again home-made, right down to the windings and the metal-foil-and-paper condenser. Its base was a wooden cigar box...

Wikipedia - Induction coil

[bobins]

I got to know them very, very well... Its code name was that of a luxury British car...

I'm sure a bit of digging around by those skilled in searching the Internet will soon reveal what it was

Interesting equipment

[NewcastleFalcon]

I got to know them very, very well... Its code name was that of a luxury British car...

I'm sure a bit of digging around by those skilled in searching the Internet will soon reveal what it was

If that is the answer well done nearest I got was a bit of Cipher Equipment Rockex made down the road at Borehamwood and with connections with Hanslope Park and which had the code-name "Donald Duck". As far as I know Donald Duck was never a British Luxury Car Maker. Got to be something like Rolls, Bentley or Aston Martin with my best bet being Rolls!

https://cryptomuseum.com/crypto/uk/rockex/index.htm
The later Rockex Mk. III, IV and V versions were built at Borehamwood (UK) where also the secret keystream tapes were manufactured. In 1962 Rockex was succeeded by the compatible Noreen (BID/590) cipher machine, but remained in service for military and diplomatic traffic alongside Noreen in the UK and Canada until 1983. The machine was also used in the Commonwealth countries Australia and New Zealand, but only for secure diplomatic traffic with the UK

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

How about an Alvis Jim?

https://cryptomuseum.com/crypto/uk/bid610/index.htm

[NewcastleFalcon]

Think that's it nailed, ^^^^^^ Think Bobins had it and you have supplied the coup de grace Mick

Nearly got there....same website same page didn't spot the "ALVIS" Not luxury enough!

Ah......I have come across Bobins picture of a communications room in the Canadian Foreign Office and the Bid 610/set up! Now where does the luxury car maker come in was this the "Rolls Royce" at the time of transistor/tape-free cipher machines.



Regards Neil

[Peter.N.]

Remember my grandmother and her companion living for some time without a mains electricity supply in a small house in Northfields, Ealing. Their radio - could have been a Cossor - ran from a chunky 90v EverReady dry battery, but the 2v was supplied by a glass (lead-acid) accumulator, which they got recharged for a couple of pence at the local hardware shop.

Although the rented property had a gas supply (which also provided lighting), the landlord refused to have electricity installed for years, but finally relented. My father, I think, did all the internal wiring. Bit hazy about all the detail, as I was only about 6 or 7 at the time.

When I started work at the local radio/tv shop one of my jobs was charging the accumulators, we only did a few as most places had electricity, I remember a railway worker who lived in a wooden cottage at the side of the lines, he had no electricity.

When we moved down here there were a number of old cottages and farms that had Lister Startomatic generators, when you turned something on in the house, providing it was a resistive load you would hear the generator start up.

We sol HT batteries for radios, the 90 volt ones were 10/6d and the 120 volt with the tapping's about 13/- and 6d to charge the accumulator. For comparison I was earning about £4.00 a week then.

Peter

[CitroJim]

How about an Alvis Jim?

https://cryptomuseum.com/crypto/uk/bid610/index.htm

Spot on! Alvis, BID610 Still in limited use right up to the mid-90s...

BID, if not so far revealed, stood for 'British Inter-Departmental' and not 'British Intelligence Department' as was often thought...

All British cypher kit has a BID number and a code name... The BID number and and code name should never be used together on unclassified media so technically I've just broken the Official Secrets Act and must go directly to jail

Bobins and Neil, I love the old pictures you've found of racks of BID610 We had similar... In one part of the photo you can just see the plug-fields where the daily key was set... The key was changed at midnight and that was when we engineers got busy with problems getting circuits back into cypher synchronisation after the key change. Often due to bad connections in the plug-fields themselves, but the most frequent was mis-settings. One had to be very careful not to offend the operator who changed the key by pointing out the mistakes made in the setting...

Happy memories of happy days

[mickthemaverick]

That reminds me of the extra responsibility I had when I was manager of a GSC. In the basement adjacent to the cable chamber was a bunkered survival room equipped with a PBX1a switchboard which had terminations for WD400 circuits linking around the network, damnit I've broken it too now Jim,. There were also 14 beds in tiers of 3 and 2 singles together with a kitchen and four cupboards full of tinned food which was "rotated" every 6 weeks following a visit from the "white van". As manager I held a key and had to go down and routine test all the circuits on a weekly basis but at different times so " nobody would notice a pattern". Laughable nowadays but deadly serious at the time!! On either side of the door was a stack of interlocking concrete blocks which were to be set across the inside of the door once the designated personnel were inside in the event of an attack. It was all still in place when I transferred to Mobile Communications in 1981 so I don't know how long it lasted!! Good days in hindsight!!

[CitroJim]

damnit I've broken it too now Jim

Maybe we can share cells Mick

so " nobody would notice a pattern". Laughable nowadays but deadly serious at the time!!

That bring back more memories I used to do lots of routine testing of similar things, just in case... We were all alert to the possibility and it seemed quite real at the time too... Very different days but again, throughout my life there's always been something to keep us on our toes... It was once the Cold War, then international terrorism and now Covid-19 with a few other less outstanding things both in between and concurrent... Wonder what's next?

Good days in hindsight!!

They certainly were I wonder if we'll look back so fondly on the 2020s in twenty years' time?

[bobins]

If it's ok with you two, I'm just going to pull up a comfy chair and open a packet of peanuts and listen. I find all the cold war Comms stuff from 25+ years ago very interesting Comms was one of the things that actually had a bit of money spent on them - both Post Office/ BT routed services and also BBC.
The concrete blocks you mention, Mick, were high Boron content.......... for obvious reasons IIRC