[GreenKeys] Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies on PBS this evening

[Don Robert House]

Jim, et all:

1.  I spent three days of hard work for less than fifteen seconds on 
the little screen.  Two shots of the strip printer insides and two 
outside.  One shot of the M15 platen.  None of the M14 KTR.  None of 
me and the M15 typing unit.  They did mention Thanks to Don House and 
NADCOMM in the credits however.

2. George Hutchisons telegram and cable gram forms were really the 
stars of the show.  And all of those characters were typed by Dr. 
Steve Kissinger as a favor for me as I was restoring the strip 
printer at the time.

3.  The filming of the old punch card machine and my three machines 
was done at the Coleman College in LaMesa a borough of San Diego in 
the old museum location which is now closed.

4. Most operators could not type numbers reliably by touch and there 
was the problem of FIGS vs LTRS.  Higher reliability if all letters 
were used.  I am not sure where Tug got the conversion card.

5. I did suggest they do the filming at your location Jim, but the 
trip was not in their budget.

Even though I am disappointed I agree with you... it was a good show. 
If you read either book on VENONA you will discover most of the 
traitors.  I agree with the old physicist.  All of them should have 
been shot.

Don


>Good show even if they did just show your hands.  If they had shown 
>much more I
>would have been mad anyway, because I have a better replica of a W.U.
>office than you do :-)
>
>I did notice one lapse of historical authenticity - when they had the
>secret ink and used an iron to bring it out that was a too-modern iron.
>Irons of the period didn't have those grooves in the sides near the point.
>
>Do we have a copy of that chart for converting digits to letters?
>That's a bit of history I was completely unaware of, that W.U. charged
>more for numbers than for words and provided a code to enable
>customers to escape the higher charges.  Or maybe it was the cable and
>radio companies - seems like the charging formulae were different for
>landline versus cable and radio.


-- 
--------------------------------------------------------
Don Robert House, N.S.E.
Curator, NADCOMM
North American Data Communications Museum
3841 Reche Road
Fallbrook, CA 92028-3810
760-723-9943 Office
760-723-9984 FAX
URL: http://www.nadcomm.org
e-mail: drhouse@abac.com