[Milsurplus] [ARC5] Dead Pigeons, Secret Messages, and Random Numbers

[Jim Haynes]

There is a document by Western Union about making one-time key tapes
for a Vernam cipher machine, says they used an unstable oscillator but
that is all they say.

In modern technology, I remember Radio Shack once sold a device for
generating numbers for use in lotteries, saying that way you wouldn't
have to agonize over picking the numbers yourself.  It probably used
several decimal counters running at different speeds and stopping
whenever you pushed a button.  If the counters are running pretty fast
there would be no correlation between them as you pushed the button at
essentially random times in the count.