The Purpose of Mystery Object 40.9.11
Upvote:0
This looks like the printer for a receiver of high-speed code transmissions, probably marking the paper with electrical impulses. But this is only one component of a system, and might be as little as just the paper feeder.
Upvote:1
Here's an excerpt from Kadin2048's answer to this question at ask.metafilter.com, making a reasonable summation if we consider the wire recording (Wiki) techniques that were known at the time:
What I think is more likely, is that the tape was just colored in dark and light patches or stripes, and that it was decoded manually. As the tape went through the 'reader' device, the light reflected from the tape probably just illuminated a window, and a human had to decode it just like they would have decoded Morse code. (The Germans had their own dot-dash code similar to Morse, but not exactly the same.) It was probably itself encoded and meaningless to the person doing the transcription. They would have simply transmitted it onwards, and the final decoding to meaningful instructions would have happened in the actual U-boats.
Upvote:6
The object in question is a blank spool of recording tape for a multiplex photographic recording system. Such systems were commonly used not only at Sayville, but at all transatlantic radio receiving stations. The way the systems worked is that a photographically sensitive tape was fed into a galvanometrically modulated exposer and then immediately developed, essentially making a picture of the Morse code dash-dot sequence received by the radio. This is what a developed tape looked like:
Here is an example of records of transmissions from various European stations, including the Nauen, Germany, station:
All receiving stations used such systems, not just the German one at Sayville. The example above is from the Bar Harbor station operated by the US Navy, for instance.
The box itself is a light-tight case (notice the red window) in which the undeveloped film is stored on a reel. By opening the box in a lighted room you ruined the film.
More post
- 📝 Did the PLO coordinate with Arab armies during the Six Day War?
- 📝 Was there a melee weapon that was used by many people at the same time?
- 📝 In WWI, which countries used prisoners as soldiers?
- 📝 Mudéjar revolt of 1264–66: how were the Mudéjars armed?
- 📝 Does Genghish Khan Worship Tengri?
- 📝 Did Joseph Stalin kill anyone personally?
- 📝 Did Jefferson really say this quote about patriotism?
- 📝 What is the source of a half remembered art history quote possibly about Bruneleschi's Florence Cathedral?
- 📝 Is there a reason for a Queen's husband not to be referred to as King?
- 📝 Why didn’t Christianity spread southwards from Ethiopia in the Middle Ages?
- 📝 Did Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Finance Minister of Louis XIV, sanction mass executions for reasons of economic policies?
- 📝 Aryanization in Nazi Germany. What did it mean in reality?
- 📝 Where Can I Find Copies of the Richmond Enquirer?
- 📝 Did Britain call up veterinarians in World War Two?
- 📝 Which is the first genocide?
- 📝 Did Julius Caesar reduce the number of slaves?
- 📝 Did the Philadelphia convention of 1787 consider and reject votes of no confidence?
- 📝 What did Cyrus the great look like?
- 📝 Why did it have to be Clausewitz who wrote the best book on war, namely On War?
- 📝 Are there examples of cities planned for urban combat that actually experienced it?
- 📝 Earliest story?
- 📝 Newton, Galileo, and Gravity
- 📝 How "excellent" were relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people?
- 📝 Telegraph availability in Russia around year 1875
- 📝 Are there any books solely about the Umayyad Invasion of Gaul?
- 📝 How was Galileo's approach to mathematics different than Descartes's approach?
- 📝 Did Gorbachev say that his intention was to destroy Communism?
- 📝 Leather 1.50 German gold mark
- 📝 Who was Mathilda von Merckens and which was her castle?
- 📝 Why require every ploughman to make his own plough?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 The Purpose of Mystery Object 40.9.11
- 📝 What was the purpose of Nazi extermination camps?
- 📝 What is the object moving across the ceiling in this stock footage?
- 📝 What was the purpose of the breastplate rings on samurai armor?
- 📝 What is the large blue object on the right in this picture showing Greek fire?
- 📝 What is the silver object on the desk and what is 'Elizabeth I' doing with it?
- 📝 What is the purpose of the iron structures seen on the sides of many WW2 flak towers?
- 📝 Mystery of the many-loaded muzzles
- 📝 Why did Britain object to the Ottomans bringing its ships-of-the-line against Russia in the beginning of the Crimean War?
- 📝 What is the purpose of this Roman siege tactic as shown in this Illustration?
- 📝 What was the purpose for Kaiser Wilhelm's visit to Jerusalem?
- 📝 Did American colonists object to the protections of Catholicism in the Quebec Act?
- 📝 What was the purpose behind Charles II's charter for Connecticut squatter settlements?
- 📝 What is the purpose of the bridge to the Russkiy island?
- 📝 What was the purpose of military prefectures in Song?
- 📝 What was the purpose of a division staff in a US Navy Task Force/Fleet in WWII?
- 📝 Did an English company famous for its hidden purpose in the 1720s ever reveal its undertaking?
- 📝 What was the main purpose in Japan trying to capture the Dutch East Indies oil fields intact?
- 📝 What was the purpose of the 1991 referendum on the future of the Soviet Union?
- 📝 What was the purpose of Lt. Gen. Frank M. Andrews' flight when he was killed in the Iceland crash on May 3, 1943?
- 📝 What was the purpose of tunnel fighting in a 17th century siege?
- 📝 In this scene what are the names of the kind of workers and the object they are propeling?
- 📝 What was the origin and purpose of the "Montes"?
- 📝 What was the purpose of creating the Weimar Republic?
- 📝 What was the purpose of each project site during the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 When did people decide that all caps means the writer is shouting?
- 📝 Did the ancients or other pre-industrial civilisations engage in unsustainable practices?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?
