If you stumble upon several Barbie-branded typewriters in the wild, you may want to snatch them up. With two or more you will be able to use capabilities built into these toys for sending and receiving cryptographic texts. The Crytpo Museum have a full write-up on the suitable models and their “4 built-in cipher modes.” But the story doesn’t stop there – there’s more, as tipped off by a FBI informant! 😉
The Barbie Typewriter E-118, is a low-cost electronic typewriter, developed as a childeren’s toy by Mehano in Slovenia (formerly: Yugoslavia) and sold worldwide by Mattel (US). The E-118 is the latest model in the product line that started with the E-115. The electronic typewriter was the successor to the earlier purely mechanical Barbie typewriter models. It is little known that all electronic variants have a hidden built-in cryptographic capability that allows secret writing.
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