Evening star., 1933-06-18
BY GEORGE w. GRAY.


i as something of jolt to be tol
that scrambling machine ha
anything to do with the success o
their getting together. n
A scrambling machine Aren't man
kinds affairs and relationships alread.
mixed and mutilated enough and NOR
than. enough? Even so astute an un
raveler Of complexities as Sir Arthu
Eddington, when asked for a mathe
matical philosophers appraisal of th'
present economic situation, threw III
his hands and answered that relativit.
and the quantum theory are simple b!
comparison. What the world needs. i
would seem, Is an unscrambling ma.
chine
All, but this scrambling machine 1!
also an unscrambler. It is an orderly
instrument of disorder, which mike.
and mutilates for a purpose, and keep:
tabs on the chaos which it creates, anC
at the end of its process delivers 1t:
product correctly sorted and neatly re-
arranged into intelligence.
talked by transoceanic radio tele.
phone to London a few days ago
Every time l said New York" the
transmitter hurled the word into space
as ''mee ware" When 1 said ''tele-
phone company" the other was jazzed
into curious pattern of vibrations
which sounded like "play-o-fine crink-
o-nope." I mentioned Chicago, Ilh-
nois," and the discerning vacuum tube
seemed to sense that these originally
were Indian words, for it made them
more so. ''Sic-a-dee cya-neon." And SO
with every syllable of the conversation.
It travelled from America to England
as gibberish. and any chance listener
who happened to have his radio set
tuned to the corresponding wave length
heard only noise, full Of sound and fury,
sigrifying nothing.
Speech Unscrambled.
But to the electrical ear which
picked up the waves in England, the
noise signified everything that it was
originally intended to signify. The
speech was unscrambled, and the con-
versation was delivered to the gentle
man at the London end of the tele-
phone circuit just as it was spoken,
brogue and all.
1t was as though jigsaw puzzle had
been carefully assembled in New York,
and then tossed through space to Lon
don, tumble of pieces in unintelli-
gible array, to be deftly caught by the
unscrambler in the London trunk ex-
change, and instantly reassembled into
the original pattern.
11fUIt uCflCCo -blldL LIlc cQRl-
neer's name for these amazing mechan-
3cal Towers of Babel designed by sci
ence for the confusion of tongues. With
out them the radio telephone would be
much less used than 1t is. For essen
tally, this instrument of communica-
ton Is an emergency medium At a
cost OF $40 a call, few people are will
ing to telephone except on business of
extreme urgency and Importance; and
business of importance generally de-
mands privacy as first requirement of
any line of communication.
Hundreds of business men have re-
sorted to the transoceanic telephone,
commercial transactions have been
specded. claims have been adjusted,
sales have been facilitated, physicians
have interviewed consultants and dag
nosed diseases, lawyers have advised cli-
ents. But perhaps the most important
and revolutionary use made of the wire
less phone is by the governments in
their diplomatic negotiations, and par
ticularly during the last three years.
Under the pressure Of financial stress
and storm, international events since
1890 have moved with breath-taking
swiftness. Time and time again it was
necessary for Secretary of State to
talk with his Ambassador abroad, or
with prime minister. 1t is difficult to
see how the delicate details of the mora
tofium of war debts could have been ar
ranged, in the sudden and spreading
emergency which developed abroad,
without resort to the spoken word, in
simultaneously communicated and di-
rectly answered.
When Herbert Hoover took up his res
1dence in the White House he asked
that the Presidents desk in the execu-
tive Offices he provided with telephone
the machine" had been excluded up
to that time. President Hoover made
frequent use of his telephone. and when
the crashing events of 1881 suggested
the importance of direct communica-
ton with Europe, he turned naturally to
the instrument on his desk, lifted the
receiver, and talked with a leader across
the ocean as easily and freely as he
would talk by local telephone with his
own Secretary of State across the street.
Tribute Paid by Hoover.
Engineers tell of fervent tribute
paid by President Hoover to this me-
chanical aid. It was during an engi-
neers' dinner at the White House in
Washington last year. The President
pointed to telephone in the room and
said, Probably the greatest instrument
for international peace in modern times
is the radio telephone"
And then he went on to tell this in
cident He said it became necessary for
him to communicate with officials then
in Europe. A certain delicate situation
was pending in international affairs,
and the President asked what would
happen If certain plans were not car
ried out. We'll" answered the Euro
aul, ufoi,ld ba would
just be too bad" And that remark,
added the President. spoke volumes.
Though it was slang, it conveyed a
thought that could hardly have been
couched in the stilted phrases of dip
lomatic note-and moreover the idea
was conveyed instantly, with all the
shading and undertones of meaning that
only the human voice can give.
But this new diplomacy of the tele-
phone would be impossible without the
infallible working of the scrambling
machine. I am told that when an i'm
portant international conver5at ton was
proposed to be engaged in between
Washington and Europe, agents of the
Department Of Justice came to New
York to check up on this privacy de-
vice. One talked and the others
listened while the apparatus was put
through its PAGES. The vibrations were
twisted into meaningless jargon, but
still the Government agents were anx-
ious. So the scrambled conversation
was submitted 70 a second stage OF
scrambling
II was shown that the scrambling
could be varied from day to day and
indeed from hour to hour. 50 that BY
no reasonable probability could any
eavesdropper rig up a mechanism to
defeat the provisions of privacy
The Federal agents were satisfied
the conversation went through, and
since then there have been days wher
the ether fairly hummed with talks be-
tween nations.
Secretary Stimson had a series oi
multiphone receivers installed at thu
Department OF State These allowed
his associates and assistants to listen ir
on a conversation, and also made il
easy for a StepOaranher 10 listen in o NJ