#HTE

What do International Government Emergency Hotlines Actually, Physically Look Like?

As fans of the old Batman TV show know, the Caped Crusader and Commissioner Gordon often contacted each other using a special hotline. Each of them had a red phone with no dial, and for some reason Commissioner Gordon kept his inside a cake display on his desk.

“I can’t enjoy my coffee unless I know that phone is protected from dust.”

Emergency hotlines exist in real life, of course, intended to connect countries that have the potential to go to war and to defuse potentially catastrophic misunderstandings. But what do these hotlines physically look like?

The Jimmy Carter Library and Museum would have you believe that the Moscow-Washington hotline actually did look like the Bat Phone:

By User: Piotrus - Own work, CC BY 3.0

However, that’s actually just a representative prop. In actuality, the hotline first set up between the two countries–prompted by the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which time delays in communication brought both countries dangerously close to a nuclear war–looked like this:

It was stored inside a wooden cabinet, not a cake display. Here’s a better look at the actual machine that was inside:

As you can see it’s not a telephone form factor at all, but a teleprinter. That’s because the device was designed for written communication, with the thinking being that speech could be misinterpreted, whereas written statements would be more deliberate. (Those growing up under the current U.S. administration may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when world leaders carefully considered statements they were putting into text.)

Anyways, what you see above is the American design, four of which were sent to Moscow. Moscow also sent four East-German-built teleprinters to Washington with the Cyrillic alphabet on the keys. Here’s what that machine looked like:

By Austin Mills (austinmills) - CC BY-SA 2.0

Nowadays we’ve done away with teleprinters, and international hotlines are simply a computer network and software. But in the case of North Korea and South Korea’s recently-re-established hotline, it’s still housed in a purpose-built cabinet. Here’s what it looks like:

As you can see, it runs Windows.

The console’s sparse interface elements are color-coded green and red. We’re not sure what the functions are, but we assume that as long as they’re talking on the green phone, everything’s good!