As a bonus, the random code's continuous signal provides precise information about the time.

ECONOMIST: Global positioning: Accuracy is addictive | The

By changing the frequency of a radio transmission many times a second, causing it to leap around in an apparently random fashion, a radio signal could be made almost impossible to intercept.

ECONOMIST: Player-piano pioneer

Only a receiver programmed with the same random sequence would be able to follow the signal as it hopped from one frequency to another.

ECONOMIST: Player-piano pioneer

Now random phrases and images came at me the sudden quick-fire assaults that signal a new idea and I knew that they would come in sequence soon enough, their predestined rhythms would assert.

NEWYORKER: Fjord of Killary

By 1968 he had concluded that they could be kept in order by stochastic (ie, random) cooling: identifying a wayward particle on one side of the accelerator ring, sending a signal directly across to the other end, and tweaking the magnetic field to nudge the oncoming errant particle back into the beam.

ECONOMIST: Simon van der Meer | The