Transvertex - Swedish Manufacturer of Ciphering Machines

The information found on Internet about the Swedish company Transvertex is close to non-existant, save some referrences to the cipher machines HC-9 and SA-1/TA-1. Hence I decided to put up some additional information about Transvertex, and some of the other cryptographic equipment manufactured in years past by said company.

Introduction

At a meeting 12 July, 1950, Per-Erik Ahlman, Bengt Florin, W. Jonsson and Vigo Lindstein agreed to form a company to manufacture a ciphering machine, the "HC-machine" constructed by mr Lindstein in the late 1940-ies (this machine would later evolve into the HC-9 ciphering machine).
Not much more happened until 15 January 1951, when the above persons met again and formed a stock company, Invertex, to manufacture another ciphering machine, which was to become the SA-1 teletype ciphering machine.
The name Invertex was found to be registered by another company, and so the name was changed to Transvertex, but the company logotype - the letters "IX" interwoven - was kept.
In December 1969, Transvertex was sold to Swedish telephone equipment manufacturer Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson, the present day Ericsson.

Some Products

The following is taken form a Transvertex sales brochure.

Hand Cipher

HC-110: a compact microprocessor-controled unit for off-line ciphering of alphanumeric text. A 35-letter internal key is typed in on the keyboard. There are 10⁴⁹ different key settings possible, and two keys can be stored simultaneously. The plain text as well as the ciphered text are shown on a 24-character display. The unit has a text memory for approximately 3000 characters. By using data modems, the cipher text can be sent automatically on telephone lines from one HC-110 unit to another.

Teleprinter Cipher

TC-213: for on-line or off-line ciphering of telex or teleprinter texts. The unit offers 10¹⁴⁰ usable internal keys, each with a series length of 10¹⁶ bits. A special transliteration method provides reliable telex traffic even in modern automatic telex networks. Synchronous transmission mode makes HF radio communication possible.

Speech Vocoder

SV-250: for digital ciphering of speech using narrow-band channels, such as public telephone lines. Uses a vocoder (voice coder/decoder) to convert analogue speech into a pulse train that is ciphered. The unit features 10¹⁴⁰ different internal keys, each with a series length of 10¹⁶ bits.

Speech Radio

SR-320: for digital speech-ciphering in military and civilian mobile VHF and UHF radio systems. Analog/digital conversion by means of a deltamodulator. Possible internal-key settings: 10²⁶. Two internal keys can be stored by means of a pushbutton set. High communication reliability by automatic resynchronization of the cipher system approx. 40 times per second.

Cipher Data

CD-410: for ciphering of complete, digital, multiplex, PCM or deltamodulated transmissions. This unit can cipher data at up to 2Mbit/sec, which corresponds to 30 PCM or 64 delta-modulated channels. More than 10⁹⁰ internal-key settings are possible, each key having a series length of 10²³ bits. Up to seven internal keys can be stored in this unit, and key change can be remote-controlled. The unit meets military environmental as well as tempest requirements. It can operate on both AC and DC power, and the changeover from AC to DC or vice versa is interruption-free.

Teleprinter and Data

TD-265: for synchronous, full-duplex transmission of up to 9,600 bits/sec. Suitable for protocols like HDLC as well as for bit-flow transmissions (digital telefacsimile, full-duplex vocoder transmissions, radar-image transmissions, etc.).