Dwight Stewart wrote:

"Brian" wrote:

Computers listening for key words in the mid-60's. Hmmm.


That's what my father told me at the time (and I have no reason to doubt
what he said). Of course, I was too young to know much about it (maybe about
12-13). I do remember the terminal in the bedroom and going to the building
several times. I also remember the antennas (dozens of large vertical
antennas in two circular patterns, a large outer circle and a smaller inner
circle). You could see those antennas from anywhere on the base. There was
also a large collection of smaller antennas. I also remember a little of
what that equipment looked like inside the building, but obviously not any
of the details.

I've been trying to figure out who would have enough money to buy, and
the talent to make use of, the 1960's computing resources needed to do
real-time Morse decoding in any volume. The list of possibilities is
really, really short.

I know of a not-small number of advances in Information Theory and
Cryptography where it took independent academics several decades to
(re)discover what the NSA already secretly knew. I've also always
thought that people who assume the performance of available commercial
decoders on hand-sent Morse is an indication of the state-of-the-art in
what is possible are also making a big mistake, though this is a topic
of such decreasing relevance that independent researchers will likely
never get around to reproducing what may have been possible years ago.

Dennis Ferguson