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Standard Telefon og Kabelfabrik
STK, or Standard Telefon og Kabelfabrik, was a telephone, electronics
and cable company in Oslo (Norway). They are commonly referred to as
Standard. STK was establised in 1915 and was later
owned by ITT, then
Alcatel and finally
Thales.
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The company was establised in 1915 as the Scandinavian Cable and Rubber Factory. In 1934, they were taken over by
ITT/Standard Electric, at
which point it was given its new name STK. That name would remain until
1987.
In 1935, after starting the producton of telephones, they had 54 people on
the payroll. Between 1950 and the early 1970s, the company was expanded
several times and finally employed over 4000 people.
The company was based in Økern, close to Oslo.
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The image on the right is an artist-impression of the factory in
Økern, made in the late 1940s.
It had its own bus route (25) operated by Oslo Public Transport
from 1948 onwards, until it was replace by a metro line in 1966 [1].
In 1987, ITT sold STK to
Alcatel, who changed the name to
Alcatel Cable Norway AS.
In the early 1990s, after a series of restructuring at
Alcatel,
almost all production facilities at Økern were closed. As a result,
Oslo lost one of its last major industrial employers [2].
In 2000, Alcatel split-off most of its cable operations and established
the independant Nexans company.
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The concrete structures at Økern are still present and in 2008 plans were
afoot to convert the buildings into homes and schools.
As of June 2008, the 9-story administrative building has been converted
into a first-class guest house, and is now known as Quality Hotel 33 [3].
➤ STK cipher machines
➤ Thales cipher machines
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STK equipment on this website
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STK was well-known for a series of cipher machines they produced over the
years for the Norwegian, American and NATO forces.
The company started in 1955
with the production of the Electronic Teleprinter Cryptographic Regenerative
Repeater Machine (ETCRRM)
of which three different models were manufactured.
This machine is probably best known for the fact that it was used
at the height of the Cold War on the Washington-Moscow hotline from 1963 onwards [7].
Machines like the ETCRRM employ a
One-Time Tape system and are in principle unbreakable.
Later developments included SELMA
(Standard Electronic Letter Machine) OKA-150,
a cipher machine that was developed for the Norwegian government (1960),
and a transistorized version of the ETCRRM,
called TCE-160
(Telecom Crypto Equipment 160), in 1963.
They also developed a special machine for the production of
random key tapes, known as the KTP-3
[6].
In the mid-1960s, STK made the move from One-Time Tape to machines with internal
key generators, based on electronic Pseudo Random Number Generators (PRNG).
The first machine in this range was
the TCE-180,
also known as TROL. Due to difficulties in the design, this machine never
reached the production stage [5].
The name TROL
was probably derived from a NATO evaluation under the same name
in the early 1960s. Other companies, such as
Philips, also
developed TROL equipment,
but they all lost the competition to
the British ALVIS (BID/610).
The TCE-180 (TROL)
was followed by the much improved Telex cipher machine
Cryptel 240,
which had such a strong encryption algorithm that the Norwegian
government restricted the machine to a limited number of official users only.
As the machine was not built to military standards, it wasn't suitable for the
military either. As a result, not many Cryptel 240 were sold.
A year later, in 1967, the
Cryptel 245 was released.
It was based on the design of the Cryptel 240, but had a less advanced crypto
logic, making it more suitable for civil applications.
About 400 units of the machine were built,
some of which were sold to oil companies and banks. Until this time, all STK
cipher machines were designed by chief engineer Per Abrahamsen [5].
In 1973, STK started the development of a fully electronic military cipher
machine, called RACE.
It was based on the first generation
of microprocessors and was released in 1978.
A commercial version of RACE, with a weaker cipher algorithm,
was known as Cryptel 265.
In 1982, RACE was chosen by NATO and Canada
as one of the machines to replace the ageing American
KL-7, alongside the
Philips Aroflex.
The US Army also adopted the machine and called
it KL-51.
The RACE/KL-51 was very robust and had a very long life span. In 2010, some of
them were still in service with the US Army. STK, who was initially owned by ITT,
was eventually bought by Alcatel and is currently owned by
Thales. Although the
name STK has disappeared, Thales Norway still successfully develops and sells
cryptographic devices. All known machines are listed below.
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Known STK cipher machines
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- Wikipedia, Standard Telefon og Kabelfabrik (Norwegian)
Retrieved October 2011.
- From Industrial to commercial area, Standard - an example (Norwegian)
Website. Oslo City Archive. 2008. 1
- Rolf E. Wulff, Petter eroberet Økern
Website Groruddalen.no. 20 June 2008. 1
- Sverre A. Christensen, Switching Relations,
the rise and fall of the Norwegian telecom industry.
Dissertation submitted to BI Norwegian School of Management. 2006.
ISBN: 82-7042-746-2.
- Frode Weirud, Crypto Historian, Personal correspondence
Crypto Museum, June 2012.
- Leif Nilsen, NISnet Kick-off
Thales Norway AS, PowerPoint presentation.
10 October 2007. Retrieved June 2012.
- Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM), Årsmelding 2008
NSM Annual Report 2008 (Norwegian).
Noen kryptosuksesser. p. 15.
- Hugo Ryvik, On a Secret Mission, 50 years of Norwegian cryptology
2005. Thales internal publication. Limited edition.
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Website no longer available in October 2012.
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Any links shown in red are currently unavailable.
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© Crypto Museum. Last changed: Monday, 22 April 2019 - 07:37 CET.
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