UB

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HMS Seal (N37)

HMS Seal was one of six ships of the Grampus-class mine-laying submarines of the Royal Navy. She served in the Second World War and was captured by the Kriegsmarine and taken into German service as UB. She was the only submarine the Germans captured at sea during World War II. Her capture allowed the Germans to correct a critical fault in their U-boat torpedoes.

Seal was laid down at the Chatham Dockyard on 9 December 1936, launched on 27 September 1938 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 24 May 1939. During her entire British career, her commander was Rupert Lonsdale, for whom it was his second command.

Early career

On being commissioned, Seal went for acceptance trials at Dartmouth and in Tor Bay. On the day of her first successful deep dive, 1 June 1939, news arrived of the loss of HMS Thetis undergoing trials at Liverpool, a personal setback for the crew who had lost many friends. Seal moved to Gosport to complete torpedo trials.

High Com

The High Com (also as HIGH COM, both written with a thin space) noise reduction system was developed by Telefunken, Germany, in the 1970s as a high quality high compression analogue compander for audio recordings.

The idea of a compander for consumer devices was based on studies of a fixed two-band compander by Jürgen Wermuth of AEG-Telefunken ELA, Wolfenbüttel, developer of the Telefunken telcom c4 four-band audio compander for professional use. In April 1974, the resulting "RUSW-200" prototype led to the development of a sliding two-band compander by Ernst F. Schröder of Telefunken Grundlagenlaboratorium, Hannover since July 1974. Finally, the released High Com system, which was marketed by Telefunken since 1978, worked as a broadband 2:1:2 compander, achieving around 10 dB of noise reduction for low and up to 20 dB A-weighted for higher frequencies, while avoiding most of the acoustic problems observed with other high compression broadband companders such as dbx.

In order to facilitate cost-effective mass-production in consumer devices such as cassette decks, the compander system was integrated into an analogue IC, TFK U401B / U401BG / U401BR, developed by Dietrich Höppner and Kurt Hintzmann of AEG-Telefunken Halbleiterwerk, Heilbronn. With minimal changes in the external circuitry the IC could also be used to emulate a Dolby B-compatible expander as in the DNR (Dynamic Noise Reduction) system for backward compatibility.