Just to say
I emerged from the depths of bar-exam hell to pick up my Dad at National Airport yesterday. On the way there, I caught All Things Considered
Imagine my amusement when the first thing I hear being broadcast from my local NPR station is a numbers station! Yes, in the wake of the recent spy scandal, ATC had decided to revisit the numbers station phenomenon.
A numbers station, of course, is a radio station, usually on the shortwave band, that does nothing but transmit a seemingly-nonsensical string of letters or numbers. It is widely thought that these are messages meant to be received by secret agents using a one-time pad cipher--theoretically unbreakable, if it's done right.
I love numbers stations. I used to spend many hours scanning the shortwave bands just to see what I could pick up, and every so often, I'd pick up something odd that I couldn't understand. A numbers station is as close as you'll get to a disembodied voice; it could be anywhere, it could be anyone, it could be speaking to anyone. There's something mysterious and romantic and tantalizing about it.
This isn't the first time NPR has looked at numbers stations--they covered them back in 2000, as part of a series on "lost and found sound." They revisited the theme again in 2004, as part of a story profiling The Conet Project--a collection of "famous" numbers stations recordings.
Keen music fans will recognize one numbers station as the background sample on "Poor Places," the eleventh track on Wilco's masterful Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album--the sample that gave the album its name.
Oh. And of course, the Internet Archive has the Entire Conet Project available for streaming or download.
Imagine my amusement when the first thing I hear being broadcast from my local NPR station is a numbers station! Yes, in the wake of the recent spy scandal, ATC had decided to revisit the numbers station phenomenon.
A numbers station, of course, is a radio station, usually on the shortwave band, that does nothing but transmit a seemingly-nonsensical string of letters or numbers. It is widely thought that these are messages meant to be received by secret agents using a one-time pad cipher--theoretically unbreakable, if it's done right.
I love numbers stations. I used to spend many hours scanning the shortwave bands just to see what I could pick up, and every so often, I'd pick up something odd that I couldn't understand. A numbers station is as close as you'll get to a disembodied voice; it could be anywhere, it could be anyone, it could be speaking to anyone. There's something mysterious and romantic and tantalizing about it.
This isn't the first time NPR has looked at numbers stations--they covered them back in 2000, as part of a series on "lost and found sound." They revisited the theme again in 2004, as part of a story profiling The Conet Project--a collection of "famous" numbers stations recordings.
Keen music fans will recognize one numbers station as the background sample on "Poor Places," the eleventh track on Wilco's masterful Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album--the sample that gave the album its name.
Oh. And of course, the Internet Archive has the Entire Conet Project available for streaming or download.