Quick Brown Fox Hotline Test

The first message sent over the Moscow–Washington hotline was "THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG'S BACK 1234567890." On August 30, 1963, Washington used this pangram with all the letters of the alphabet and the digits 0–9 to test that the new teletype link to Moscow transmitted every character correctly. Later, Russian translators puzzled over the phrase and asked their American counterparts what it meant.

Previous Fact Next Fact