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← TST EMU DDT-300 →
Acoustic Pocket Terminal
- wanted item
The Acoustic Pocket Terminal, or APT-60 for short, was a miniature hand-held
message terminal with built-in
encryption facilities,
developed in the early-1970s by TST (Tele Security Timmann)
in Rodgau (Germany). It can only send data and
was available for Latin and Arabic languages
[1].
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The device had a built-in acoustic modem that conformed to the BELL 103
standard, and had the same size as a regular pack of cigarettes, making it
it very easy to conceal on the body.
It is housed in a black aluminium enclosure and has a recessed keyboard
that consists of 30 blue microswitches and a small embedded speaker.
The keyboard has the German QWERTZ layout, and some buttons have an extra
function that can be accessed by pressing the DEC button at the bottom
left first. The SPACE button is at the bottom centre. To the left of the 'A'
is a red LED.
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When transmitting an encrypted message, the small speaker at the bottom right
should be held against the microphone of a radio or a telephone handset. It
transmits the message at a speed of 300 baud as a series of BELL 103 tones,
pretty much like a common computer modem of the era.
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The device is powered by a 6V DC voltage, which is provided by four small
internal button cells. It can store messages of approx. 200 characters in its
internal battery-backed CMOS RAM and is compatible with
the DDT-300 suitcase terminal.
The APT-60 was also supplied to Arabic states, for which a different
keyboard layout with the Arabic alphabet was available.
In the image on the right, the Arabic version of the APT-60 is shown —
in this case without its aluminium enclosure —
concealed in an unobtrusive black
luxurous leather cigarette pack holder of the era.
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The APT-60 was introduced shortly after Timmann's first device, the
PPC-19 pocket encryptor that was somewhat bigger.
The miniature APT-60 was later complemented by the more versatile but larger
DDR-300 portable terminal,
that was housed in an unobtrusive Haliburton briefcase.
In 1980, the APT-60 was succeeded by the much improved transmit-only
TST-1221 pocket cipher machine, which had an extended
keyboard and an 8-position Liquid Crystal Display (LCD).
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© Crypto Museum. Created: Monday 04 March 2013. Last changed: Saturday, 10 March 2018 - 09:18 CET.
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![Latin version of the APT-60 pocket terminal. Photograph kindly supplied by Jim Meyer [1].](img/apt60_large.jpg)
![Arabic version of the APT-60 pocket terminal. Photograph kindly supplied by Jim Meyer [1].](img/apt60_arab_large.jpg)
![Latin version of the APT-60 pocket terminal. Photograph kindly supplied by Jim Meyer [1].](img/apt60_thumb.jpg "image # apt60_large.jpg")
![Arabic version of the APT-60 pocket terminal. Photograph kindly supplied by Jim Meyer [1].](img/apt60_arab_thumb.jpg "image # apt60_arab_large.jpg")