The CIA and KGB had some interesting ‘quick destruction’ methods for their OTPs during the Cold War, including being highly flammable, water-soluble or edible.
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Most/all of the confidential paper stuff was water soluble. This included the rolls of water soluble ink impregnated teleprinter rolls (Gestentner duplicator) It was quite normal on smaller ships to throw any waste overboard. Yes tins, bottles - everything including the used ink rolls. Food etc etc. this was normally ditched over the stern and in the case of our office waste done at night to avoid the chance of confidential waste being picked up before it dissolved.
I never thought this was acceptable even as a teenager in the late 60s as I’d been taught at home to not throw litter away like that.
Once whilst escorting the Royal Yacht to Rio i went aft, emptying the two bags over the stern.
When daylight came as we entered Rio there was much activity aloft and a lot of p@&£ed off sailors with buckets, soap and brushes etc. Alas I’d not noticed the following wind the night before and all waste was stuck to the funnels, masts and rigging. The inked ‘ormig’ rolls had all got wet in the night and the ink streaks ran down every available surface. ![]()
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I think it was all cleaned up before the Queen popped up on the deck of the Royal Yacht.
I believe that all waste is now brought ashore for proper disposal - and quite right too!!
When I was playing with teletypes in the 70s we used yellow paper tape for the punched tape. It was “oiled” to make it slip and slide and tougher. It certainly would not have disolved quickly in water, sea or fresh. It was quite unlike the paper tape I used on my Data General Nova which was light grey and quite fibrous.
Ah, my abbreviation there sorry. I was referring to Enigma 2000, which was previously known as Enigma.
http://www.signalshed.com/newsletters/CEN.pdf
This is an interesting thing I stumbled upon, MAME can emulate a Gerät 32620 which was used more notably by the Stasi (other notable rum characters probably used it as well of course):
https://blog.adafruit.com/2022/12/13/mame-now-emulates-a-stasi-numbers-station-speech-synthesizer/
A bit of history on the Gerät 32620 is here:
Also, found a video of the emulated Gerät 32620 here:
And here is a real one: