My Love of Radio

[Dave]

Yup, stealth is always fun. I still remember a Kraft Theater or NBC Television Playhouse or Studio One presentation of a play in which piano keys of a baby grand in a French nightclub frequented by German soldiers were wired to a transmitter hooked up to an antenna wire secreted in the long handle of an up-ended ox cart. The Nazis never guessed, but they knew secret information was somehow leaving town. A bright pianist and spy wrote compositions that when played just right would key the transmitter with Morse Code letters and numbers that relayed secret plans. Unlikely scenario, but I believed it as a kid. I suppose it would be possible, but if you wired the middle C key and let's say F above Cmid, then G and the following A, for example, and wanted to send, "The 4th Armored Brigrade of the Wermacht will move out this Thursday at 0900 hours," would it sound like music?

The scam was outed when a German officer insisted our friend play Horst-Wessel-Lied, which in an unbelievably hard to believe twist, which the spy was unbelievably smart enough to immediately realize, just happened to key in a three letter code that translated, "Ignore All Just Sent" (or something like that.)

[keith]

That one has me completely stumped. I realize when I consider it that for the 50's and early 60's I lived in places where with a good antenna we could get typically 2 TV stations. It wasn't until the mid-60's that we were able to get all 3 networks plus PBS (I don't think it was called that at the time). I must have missed a lot of classic TV.