Play-O-Fine Crink-A-Nope

People with important secrets do not yet whisper them into radio telephones because they know that anyone with a radio set can eavesdrop. But last week in Manhattan, Sergius Paul Grace, vice president of Bell Telephone Laboratories, demonstrated how radio conversations may be absolutely private. Mr. Grace played a phonograph record into a special type of microphone. The audience heard an ordinary speech. Then he took away the microphone, played the record alone. Listeners heard a gibberish of strange grunts and squeaks.

Mr. Grace instructed one of his audience to say "Play-o-fine crink-a-nope" into the marvelous microphone. The words which came from the microphone were: "Telephone Company." "Oyaneon Playafiend Acecilofin" became "Illinois Telephone Association."

Mr. Grace explained to his mystified audience that the invention is known as the "scrambled speech" method of telephony recently developed by the clever, hardworking scientists of Bell Telephone Laboratories. The invention consists of two complicated pieces of apparatus. One, located at the transmitting end, inverts ordinary speech in much the same way that a camera lens sets the image of an object on its head. Low tones become high squeaks, high pitches turn into low grunts. Tones are changed in frequency, resulting in a language which no eaves- dropper could understand. At the receiving end of the radio telephone a translating apparatus changes the inverted tones back to normal. The "scram-bled speech" invention is already used by five transatlantic radio telephone channels. Bell Telephone Laboratories' staff of researchers--3,000 scientists and engineers--is now working on refinements, hopes soon to finish.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.