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Christos military and intelligence corner
Personal blog · chris-intel-corner.blogspot.comhistorysecurity
Christos military and intelligence corner is a personal blog at chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com about history and security. Since 2017, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “The American M-209 cipher machine”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on the history of cryptology and voice scrambling, including WWII analog voice scramblers, Alan Turing's Delilah project, Hedy Lamarr's spread-spectrum work, and the Combined Cipher Machine.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Military and intelligence history mostly dealing with World War II.
Most-linked posts?
- The American M-209 cipher machine3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-07-12
- /2012/02/intercepted-conversations-bell-labs-3.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-07
- The Combined Cipher Machine 1940's-1950's2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-06
What Hacker News says?
Not really digital. The "combining unit" seems to have been an analog adder that wraps. The key generation was mechanical and digital, and produced an analog key waveform to add to the voice signal. At the other end,the analog waveform was subtracted out. Keeping both ends in sync would have been the main problem. If it was a real A to D with digital encryption, it would have needed far more tubes. The digital side…
Comment linking /2012/02/intercepted-conversations-bell-labs-3.html
on “Alan Turing's "Delilah" project”Submitted The American M-209 cipher machine (2012) as a story · 49 points
HN discussionLook at the prior art. The key prior patent cited is BAESECKE, (2,134,850). This has a "wobbler" to change the transmitting frequency, which is fine, but that patent is vague as to how the receiving end stays in sync. Markey gets that syncing up transmitter and receiver is the real problem, and talks of it as a solved problem from television. (This is 1941, experimental TV exists.) Some mechanisms are discussed, bor…
Comment linking /2012/02/intercepted-conversations-bell-labs-3.html
on “Analysis of Hedy Lamarr's Contribution to Spread-Spectrum Communication”Submitted The Combined Cipher Machine 1940's-1950's as a story · 15 points
HN discussionBTW the first analog voice scrambler (as far as I know) dates to WWII: http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2012/02/intercepted-c...
Comment linking /2012/02/intercepted-conversations-bell-labs-3.html
on “Rebuilding a Piece of the First Digital Voice Scrambler”Submitted The American M-209 cipher machine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI’ve written a new essay on cryptology dealing with the Combined Cipher Machine used by the US and UK in WWII and in the 1950’s. https://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-combined... The CCM has not been covered by historians in detail, so this is the first time all this information is presented somewhere.
Comment linking /2025/03/the-combined-cipher-machine-1942-1962.html
on “The Combined Cipher Machine 1940's-1950's”Submitted The American M-209 cipher machine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted History of the US M-209 cipher machine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Compromise of Polish codes and ciphers WWII as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Combined Cipher Machine, 1942-1962 as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
