A phenomenon on shortwave radio of stations whose broadcasts consist most often of strings or groups of numbers (hence the name) recited by human or synthesized voices, although verbal or musical phrases and messages in Morse code are also known to occur. They are not strictly English-language; I don't even believe they're mostly English-language. They've been around since right after World War II. (I've heard claims as far back as World War I, which I find less convincing, but I will admit I have not looked at the data for myself.) The thing about numbers stations is that, as far as I know, no one has ever been able to confirm what they're for, but the widespread belief is that they're used by intelligence services of various countries broadcasting to agents in the field: keys for deciphering a one-time pad. There are entire radio enthusiast cultures that study the transmissions of these stations, trying to crack their codes or pinpoint the signals or just listen in. They are dying out, but they have a fascinating persistence in a post-Cold War era. I learned "The Lincolnshire Poacher" from the singing of John Roberts and Tony Barrand (and later the setting by Benjamin Britten, which is what I sang at the MS benefit concert in October and reprised in December at the synagogue in Newton), but derspatchel knew the song because the first couple of bars were for decades the interval signal of a station supposed to be run by British Intelligence out of an RAF base on Akrotiri. It only ceased transmitting in 2008.
Orphée in Cocteau's film eavesdrops on transmissions from the underworld, using the radio in the Princesse's car to tune in to the frequency Death and her kind use to communicate among themselves. Their brief, surrealistic phrases (L'oiseau chante avec ses doigts, un seul verre d'eau éclaire le monde—The bird sings with its fingers, a single glass of water lights up the world), repeated and interspersed with groups of numbers, are very much in the style of numbers stations; Cocteau himself identified them with coded broadcasts made by the Resistance during World War II. The movie was probably my first exposure to the phenomenon.
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A phenomenon on shortwave radio of stations whose broadcasts consist most often of strings or groups of numbers (hence the name) recited by human or synthesized voices, although verbal or musical phrases and messages in Morse code are also known to occur. They are not strictly English-language; I don't even believe they're mostly English-language. They've been around since right after World War II. (I've heard claims as far back as World War I, which I find less convincing, but I will admit I have not looked at the data for myself.) The thing about numbers stations is that, as far as I know, no one has ever been able to confirm what they're for, but the widespread belief is that they're used by intelligence services of various countries broadcasting to agents in the field: keys for deciphering a one-time pad. There are entire radio enthusiast cultures that study the transmissions of these stations, trying to crack their codes or pinpoint the signals or just listen in. They are dying out, but they have a fascinating persistence in a post-Cold War era. I learned "The Lincolnshire Poacher" from the singing of John Roberts and Tony Barrand (and later the setting by Benjamin Britten, which is what I sang at the MS benefit concert in October and reprised in December at the synagogue in Newton), but
Orphée in Cocteau's film eavesdrops on transmissions from the underworld, using the radio in the Princesse's car to tune in to the frequency Death and her kind use to communicate among themselves. Their brief, surrealistic phrases (L'oiseau chante avec ses doigts, un seul verre d'eau éclaire le monde—The bird sings with its fingers, a single glass of water lights up the world), repeated and interspersed with groups of numbers, are very much in the style of numbers stations; Cocteau himself identified them with coded broadcasts made by the Resistance during World War II. The movie was probably my first exposure to the phenomenon.