Interesting shed find by NMOC

[Radio Wrangler]

Ah, that's making me feel better if it had been generally offered and advertised.

David

[m0cemdave]

Whilst I was not involved in this, I do know some of the people who were, and I can advise as follows:

This unit is not a "Lorenz Crypto Machine" (which would have been very valuable).

It is an incomplete paper punch teleprinter which turned out, after cleaning and restoration, to be a correctly matching item to accompany the Lorenz crypto exhibit in the museum.

The acquisition was made some months ago. I think the story has only appeared now because the museum is actively seeking spare parts to get it working.

Unfortunately the mass media are more interested in promoting juicy tales of unusual items turning up at boot sales (in this case the well-known online version) than strictly accurate reporting.

[Paul Stenning]

Something like this is probably impossible to value. It is obviously extremely rare, and to the right people it is historically highly valuable. In this case it is a missing part of equipment already in the museum's collection.

But to anyone else it is an incomplete and unusable item, of minimal value or interest. It could so easily have ended up in a skip. Even if its real purpose was known it is questionable whether anyone would be interested in paying much for it. Collectors generally want complete items, not just parts.

Many museums also have very limited budgets, being run by volunteers and seeking donations to cover costs etc.

On balance I am with the museum on this one. Hopefully if the seller does find out what she had, hopefully she will be grateful that it is now in the hands of the right museum and will be preserved.

[Station X]

Has anyone been able to find the original eBay listing?

[ms660]

I looked on Ebay sold/completed listings but found nothing.

I'm surprised that this thread has got this far based on a couple of edited journalistic quotes

The museum reps might have informed the seller what the equipment actually was and its historical significance and the seller took the £10 just to cover the auction listing costs etc.

When all's said and done it has in effect been donated and for the foreseeable future has been saved for the nation which is all that matters so far as the equipment goes.

Lawrence.

[McMurdo]

No-one bought it to directly profit from it or sell it, did they, if it's going into a charitable museum. One man's junk..etc...

[TonyDuell]

I have no particular love of the NMOC but having heard that it was an E-bay item I don't see they did anything wrong. Surely it is in the nature of E-bay and other auctions that things may sell for a low price if others do not realise what they are. If you want to prevent that, you set a reserve price.

I certainly don't see how any deception is involved. The item was listed, it sold, the buyer paid for it.

A personal example. An item I wanted (not as rare as this, I suspect, but still very unusual, part of an obscure option for an early personal computer) was listed with an opening bit of around £20. I actually bid several hundred pounds for it as that is what it was worth to me. Nobody else bid, so I got it for the opening bit. Did I act incorrectly? I can't see how.

Similarly, I do not see how the poster who bought a lens in a camera shop for a low price acted wrongly. Shops should know the value of the things they are selling.

It is, IMHO, rather different if a non-knowledgeable person has some item, asks you for a value and you say 'Oh that's not worth much, I'll give you a fiver for it' when you know it is worth a lot more. That is not something I would ever do.

About 25 years ago, my late father and I did some simple repairs for an elderly lady neighbour. She said she had 'an old radio' that we could have. This 'old radio' turned out to be Quad, an FM1 tuner, 22 pre-amp and (oddly) only one II power amplifier. We did tell her that (even then) it was worth serious money, but she said we could have it anyway. Again, I do not feel we did anything wrong.

[Radio Wrangler]

Hi Tony,

Yes, free choice and posession of the facts are the key points. it sounds like we've all gone off on a wild goose chase courtesy of journalistic stirring.

And that lens has taken a few photos which have appeared on this site.

David

I hope the lady got a lifetime ticket to the museum at least.

[yesnaby]

I'm sorry but there seems to be something a bit fishy about the visit to Southend. The volunteers visited the lady to inspect and collect the item but 'failed to note their contact details' and are 'trying to find them'. Do they not recall the address? Also, there is the eBay messaging system, though if they also did not note the details of the listing that could be difficult!

[dave walsh]

The Mail [today] said "The device, found under rubbish in it's original case, is thought to be worth thousands of pounds. The more famous but less sophisticated Enigma machine recently sold at auction house Bonhams for £249,000."

Does this amount to an accurate assessment of value ie perhaps less than an Enigma machine but not that much?

Dave W

[AC/HL]

I wouldn't take any Media story at face value. Only the participants know the accurate detail of the transaction.

[julie_m]

This is true. The newspapers will print anything that they expect people will read; the actual story really isn't important, all that matters are the advertisements that go along with it. Even the actual sales of papers to readers are just a little sideline for the media companies; the real money is coming in from the advertisers.

For the Daily Mail at least, it's a good story because the same story appeals both to nationalism (we, not some foreigners, have the filthy hun code machine from the war we won!) and to moral outrage (they paid what for it, when they knew it was worth how much?). This will most probably confirm what the reader already thinks, encouraging them to buy the paper -- and so bring in more payments from the advertisers -- again tomorrow.

[dave walsh]

I hadn't seen yesterday's Guardian when I passed on that quote from the Mail. I was wondering [having read other comments here and in the press] whether the suggestion that the Enigma Machine might be more valued [in every sense] because it's now well known to the public-while the Teleprinter is actually a rare beast; has validity? Or was someone trying to downplay things by saying it's not so valuable anyway because it's not an Enigma

Interestingly, the Guardian put the story onto the whole of P3 with a very large illustration of the type of machine under discussion but it was a Bank Holiday-that might be of interest here though!

Dave

[dseymo1]

Historical artifacts as such are often worth surprisingly little. Look at what ancient Roman relics go for, for instance.
Without the rest of the system, there's not much that can be done with the keyboard apart from displaying it, which only a few enthusiasts and museum curators would be interested in.
I suppose it's fun to be able to say "Look what I have here...", but not many would spend serious money in order to be able to do so.

[Herald1360]

Having seen the photo of the "artefact" my first impression was "Oh, that's just an old teleprinter with its motor missing". It certainly didn't look like any sort of cipher machine.

I tend to agree that it's very interesting as a missing part of a Lorenz system, but of little intrinsic value in itself and probably nowhere near as rare either.

[TonyDuell]

As I understand it, this teleprinter does not, itself, have any encryption device in it.

It is just a standard machine of the type that was used with the Lorenz encryption system. In said system, was the teleprinter connected to the encryption machine or was it (as I thought) simply used to prepare paper tapes that were later read and encrypted for transmission?

Is there any provenance that suggests that this particular machine was ever used with the Lorenz encryption units?

[Paul Stenning]

The BBC article says:

When volunteers took the teleprinter back from Essex to the museum, they found it was stamped with the official wartime number from the German army that matches the one on the machine from Norway.

I do not know whether that is sufficient provenance or not though.

[turretslug]

It's an ambiguous statement,though- does it simply mean that, in Wehrmacht type designation, teleprinter model X would typically be used with decoder model Y, a bit like saying that receiver R1155 "matches" transmitter T1154. A teleprinter could be a very generic device used in anything from Hitler's most closely guarded bunker to a provincial department store.

[SteveCG]

Looking in the local library I saw that two books:

"Colossus Bletchley Park's Greatest Secret" by Paul Gannon (2006)
and "Colossus" by B. Jack Copeland (2006)

Have descriptions and photos as well, concerning these machines and their operation.