Today an interesting lot arrived, 1 10-inch record and one 7-inch record. But not just your run-of-the-mill boring mechanically pressed records, no. Actual lathe-cut acetate records, meant for home-recording and radio-station usage. Large disc, side 1. Both records got a strange copper/caramel colour to them. What is even stranger is that no music or even speech was embossed into the acetate... but actual MORSE-CODE! 3 of the 4 sides got morse code. The remaining 4rth side has a home recording, where the person says something along the lines of "London England calling, hello America." One of the 3 sides has not just boring normie morse code, but morse code that appears to be encrypted in some way. The text appears completely scrambled. Large disc, side 1, morse code to text with program: J W MILES NORTHWEST OF KINHWA ? KINHWA THE CHINESE REPORTED. * * ALLIED HEADQUARTERS AUSTRALIA U >EA S TEAA >EIING >T FORMATION OF 18 ? 18 JAPANESE PLANES OVER THE NEW GUINEA ? NEW GUINEA CT AST 60 ? 60 MILES SOUTHEAST OF PORT M >ORESBY ? PORT MORESBY TLLIED AIRMEN SHOT DOWN FIVE ENEMY CRAFT S ED DAMAGED THREE MORE IN A FURIOUS DOGFIGHT FRIDAY GENERAL MACARTHURS ? MACARTHURS HEADQUARTERS ANNOUNCED TODAY. ON DY ONE ALLIED PLANE WAS LOST. HEADQUAR >TERS ALSO REPORTED IH >AT ALLIED BOMBERS HAD MADE A NIRHT ASSAUR T ON HARBO >. HEADQUA TERS ALSO REPORTED THAT ALLE S BOMBERS HAD MADE A NIGHT ASSAULT ON HARBORS AT DILI ? DILI TIMOR ? TIMOA AT Small disc, side 1, morse code to text with program: EEUDHL CURZV SBTVI SXCMV QSYMG GCIBM WKE >NCE A >ETVA IT >GHIBM WD T E T ITMBH III T >S A KKTA AB UBE >E E A RG DA >ECL L ADOGV FSOHN ZVMIN >T E ES EI H EI E H*DUA TFFGF VRDLK WWEBC GQSJF QAGBM R >FCBD YGE WX KMUNV USKRW GQWBX GYLMD QESGS DVYQF GAJNF ULXKV FVB >RVE M IQL II N GQ I JFZCE LKEGL EYWUA VHVNM AGDTA XDHBQ ALTUE YHITB GMDSW NZ A L VNUEW EKBR G ANSEOG AIWIF EN DV F URD VIHA V XT SOW IOM UG A HVYZ KK 10T Large disc, side 2, morse code to text with program: TRILT E M OS A UHAU*TE O ? 2AU1/2 SQUARE MILE BRIN GEHEAD HELD BY THE RED ARMY ON THE GERMAN SIDE OF A RIVER IN THE IZYUM=BARVENKOVS ? IZYUM=BARVENKOVA SECTOR. A RUSSIAN ANNOUNCEMENT SAID THE RED ARMY WAS WAGING A DEFENSIVE FIGI E >ST AGAINST ENEM= TANKS AND IE >NFANTRY IN THIS SECTOR WITH NOTHING OF MOMENT TO REPORT ELSEWHERE ON THE FRONT. N THE KHARKOV ? KHARKOV SECTOR ABOUT 80 ? 80 MILES TO THE NORTH SOVIET DISPATCHES SAID THE RUSSIAN FORCES WERE CONTINUING TO CONSOLIDATE THE POSITIONS THEY WON IN MORE THAN TWO WEEKS OF A MASSIVE OFFENSIVE. LIGHT ATTACKS BY GERMAN SCOUTING PARTIES WERE REPORTED REPULSED. THE NEXT MOVE IN THE EIANT TEST OF STRENGTH AND ENDURANCE WAS NOT CLE Small disc, side 2, containing the only speech recording of the lot. So that begs the question... when, where, how and why? I would be very interested to know who could have send this morse code, who could have received them, why somebody would record this, context to their messages and when they were made. This link has all 4 sides as audio files, the 3 sides with morse decoded to text and two photos of the large and small disc.
Fascinating, I ran the garbled file through Audacity software, cleaned it up and decoded it with MultiPSK thinking it might give a better translation… but got similar results to you! After a bit of Googling I came across this site Morse Code Teaching on 78 rpm Records. | My Website that suggests they were for Morse training, This part could explain the strange text-: "On 30th July 1941, four more sides were recorded, and issued on DB-2041 and DB-2042 in October 1941. They comprised ‘Unpronounceable Code in Five Letters and Figure Groups’. The four sides were at seven, eight, eleven and thirteen words per minute."
