As mentioned in the article “Numbers Stations in World War I: 100 Years of Espionage” the first known instance of a numbers station was in WWI.

The First Numbers Stations and Listener

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2024-10-06 21:30:03

As mentioned in the article “Numbers Stations in World War I: 100 Years of Espionage” the first known instance of a numbers station was in WWI. Issue 12 of the original ENIGMA newsletter wrote about the earliest known listener, Anton Habsburg. He listened in on a few of the enemies stations and wrote down about 30 pages of material every day and would drop them off at the War Office.

This story was originally featured in the Austrian radio program “Kurzwellenpanorama” (Shortwave Panorama). Also as mentioned in the article, the station(s) were likely in Morse code.

The following is taken from a feature “Kurzwellenpanorama” (Shortwave Panorama) about one of the most interesting Austrian radio pioneers, Anton Habsburg. He was born in 1901 and as a little boy became interested in radio. He had a room, built some equipment and learned Morse code. Because of his position in the Austrian monarchy he had no judicial problems with his activities.

So he made some QSOs (radio contacts) with the Austrian militarily station in Vienna. His first activities were during WWI, when he became involved in numbers transmissions. He Regularly tuned to the coded messages from the enemy stations (around thirty pages of material each day). These were FL- “Tour Eiffel” from Paris; ICI from Cotona, Italy; MSK from Moscow. These stations exchanged coded messages. He always wrote down the numbers and on his way home from school called at the war office.