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In the past, Openreach needed approximately 5, telephone exchanges located in most cities, towns and villages, in order to support its traditional copper-based network that spans the UK. Telephone exchanges are often nondescript buildings that often occupy valuable real estate and land. Some of these exchanges can be very small indeed think garden shed , but some of them can be large buildings, as historically they were required to house lots of bulky telecoms equipment back in the day.
The two staff members remained on the islands for the duration of the war. On 29th December the CTO was set on fire by burning debris blown in from adjacent buildings in one of the most destructive German air attacks of the Second World War.
A reserve telegraph instrument room had been established in the basement of King Edward Building nearby and, in the longer term, telegraph services were maintained by transferring work to the outskirts of London.
The interior of the building was completely destroyed. Its damaged upper floors were unsafe and had to be dismantled. The shell of the ground and first floors was refurbished - the ground floor for office accommodation, and the first for instrument rooms. The new telegraph equipment was opened for service in June The transfer of the London Toll 'A' lines to automatic working and the opening of the new manual board took place on 14th November.
A VHF radio multi-channel telephone link was converted to frequency modulation for the first time. The first submerged repeater was laid in the Irish Sea between Anglesey and the Isle of Man in a submarine coaxial cable using a rigid housing suitable to fathoms. What is generally regarded as the world's first programmable electronic computer Colossus was designed and constructed by a Post Office Research Branch team headed by T H Flowers Bletchley Park was the centre of British wartime code breaking operations.
The purpose of Colossus was to decipher German non-Morse encrypted communications - known as "Fish" at Bletchley - which were transmitted at high speeds on a teleprinter machine, called the Lorenz SZ, using the Baudot 32 letter alphabet. The mathematician Bill Tute had broken the German teleprinter codes in , but it was recognised that the decryption process could be largely automated to reduce the time taken to decipher the messages. Flowers was consulted by Max Newman later Professor of Mathematics at Manchester who was responsible for the automation process.
Flowers had been involved with work at Bletchley since the previous year, when the mathematician Alan Turing and fellow cryptanalysts had sought technical assistance from the Post Office in the breaking of Enigma.
He proposed using valves instead of the mechanical switching units employed in an earlier device. His proposal was not taken seriously at first, since valves were thought to be too unreliable and fragile, but Flowers knew from his pre-war research into electronic telephone systems that valves were reliable if they were not moved or switched off. It is now recognised that without the contribution of the code breaking activity, in which Colossus played a major part, the war may have lasted considerably longer.
It was in the preparations for D Day that Colossus proved most valuable, since it was able to track in detail communications between Hitler and his field commanders. Flowers had been told that it had to be ready by June or it would not be of any use. He was not told the reason for the deadline, but realising that it was significant he ensured that the new version was ready for 1st June, five days before D-Day.
A working replica of Colossus has been constructed in recent years and housed at Bletchley Park. The original Colossus consisted of 1, valves the Mark II used 2, valves and was the size of a small room, weighing around a ton. Described by Flowers as a "string and sealing wax affair", it nevertheless could do in hours what otherwise could have taken weeks, being able to process 5, characters a second to run through the many millions of possible settings for the code wheels on the German enciphered teleprinter system.
Designed as a code breaking machine, and without an effective memory or a stored program, it was not quite what is regarded as a computer today. Nevertheless, it predated other contenders for the title of the first modern working computer, and was the forerunner of later digital computers. A newly built counterpart to GBR was able to take traffic within a few days. The damage to the building and GBR was repaired within six months.
It became the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board in Arthur C Clarke, an English expert on space research and later to become renowned for his science fiction classic ' A Space Odyssey', suggested in 'Wireless World' the use of synchronous satellites for communications, the first occasion such a concept was proposed.
The CS Alert No. The German cableship ' Nordeney ' was given to the Post Office as a replacement for war losses and was renamed the Alert , the third of that name. She was scrapped in Some continental telephone and telegraph and transatlantic telephone services were reopened. Post war re-opening of some trans-Atlantic services.
A call from London to New York at basic rate is 3 for 3 minutes. CS Monarch No. In many ways, nationalisation did not dramatically affect the way the company operated.
Successive Governments left it largely to its own devices, though with strict limits on its ability to spend and expand.
From the company was allowed rather more commercial freedom, so long as it agreed to consult with the Government over any major programmes which might be politically or financially sensitive. With the election of a new Conservative Government in , committed to the withdrawal of state intervention in industry and the free market philosophy, a new approach was inevitable.
There were further sales of Government shares in November and December This saving to the public resulted from careful salvage of every type of material no longer fit for service. Condemned telephone and telegraph cables, wires and instruments were broken down and the component metals separated for bulk disposal.
More than 9, tons of scrap lead and 1, tons of scrap copper were recovered and sold. Whole of pre-war telephone services reinstated except those to Guatemala, Malaya, Philippines, Siam and Syria. A shared service was made obligatory for all new residential applicants and for removing residence subscribers.
The phototelegraph service with Europe was re-introduced for the first time since the beginning of the war. The Tercentenary Scheme for the provision of telephone kiosks was abolished. The Rural Allocation Scheme was introduced: kiosks were allocated to rural areas and installed where recommended by a rural local authority, whether likely to prove profitable or not.
A London-Birmingham television radio relay link was opened using large tube coaxial television cables. The Commonwealth Communications Council, founded in , was reconstituted as the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board with essentially the same terms of reference. A long-distance television cable was brought into service between London and Sutton Coldfield, the first of its kind.
Field trials of the pressurisation of trunk and junction cables radiating from Leatherhead were held. The success of the Strowger system to meet network demands - largely as a result of the arrangements under the Telephone Exchange Equipment Bulk Supply Agreement signed in and the British Telephone Technical Development Committee set up in - led to an important decision.
There had been rapid advances in electronic techniques during and immediately following the Second World War which led the Post Office and their exchange equipment manufacturers to believe that electronic exchanges could be developed within a short space of time without pursuing alternative electro-mechanical systems. As a result, the decision was now taken to work towards a progressive change of the network from mechanical Strowger systems to electronic systems.
These initiatives were put in place to examine various possible solutions for electronic exchanges, and to avoid unnecessary duplication of research and development by sharing such work amongst the five manufacturers party to the Bulk Supply Agreement with the Post Office. The hope was that the intermediate step of the introduction of register controlled crossbar systems, apparent in other telecommunications administrations elsewhere, would not be necessary under this policy.
In the event, development of electronic systems proved more difficult than originally thought, and by the Automatic Telephone and Electric Company realised that to maintain their position in the export market they needed a viable crossbar system to market. As a result the company developed in time the Crossbar System.
Original development of electronic systems was based on time-division- multiplex techniques and a prototype TDM exchange was built and installed in the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill.
Parties to JERC co-operated in designing and building a large electronic exchange of the same type which was put into service by the Post Office at Highgate Wood in The experience of Highgate Wood showed that TDM techniques were uneconomic and difficult to achieve with the technology and components then available. The parallel space division approach, using reed relays for switching, proved more promising and development was concentrated in this area, leading eventually to the successful TXE2 and later the TXE4 systems.
Private Automatic Branch Exchanges Nos. A Telephone Act became law in August which enabled the Postmaster-General to set rental charges and so forth by statutory regulation. The passing of the Act was the first recognition in law of the telephone as a separate instrument from the telegraph. It was also the first Telephone Act passed by Parliament, 75 years after the invention of the telephone.
Until this time the Postmaster-General conducted the telephone service under powers conferred by a number of Telegraph Acts, because of the court decision in that a telephone was a form of telegraph under the telegraph acts then in force. The objective of the legislation was to simplify the provision of a telephone service by replacing the existing system of individual contracts between customers and the Postmaster-General for providing apparatus and equipment with a system of Statutory Regulations.
Post Office engineers evolved an entirely new type of deep sea telephone cable. Known as the lightweight submarine cable it had a steel strand in the centre instead of the conventional layer of steel armour wires on the outside.
This lightweight type of cable was both cheaper and easier to lay. As an "approved attachment" they were not supplied by the Post Office, but by the Ansafone Company. The Post Office did not market its own machine until BTI operated until the Project Sovereign re-organisation in , when its functions were split between various new divisions.
A new Directory Enquiry Service - which included the use of the London Postal Area printed street directory - came into operation in January. An Anglo-Norwegian submarine telephone cable was laid between Aberdeen and Bergen.
At the time it was the longest submarine cable in the world at a length of nautical miles and was laid by the Post Office cableship HMTS 'Monarch' No. A step was taken towards full automatic working with the gradual introduction of through-operator dialling, which permitted an originating controlling operator to set up calls automatically over two or more links to a terminating automatic exchange through switching equipment at zone centre exchanges.
This stage began with the opening in of two large automatic trunk exchanges, followed by similar exchanges in other important centres. The first transatlantic telephone cable TAT1 was laid between Oban in Scotland and Clarenville in Newfoundland, a distance of 2, miles.
After crossing Newfoundland, a further submarine cable was used to complete the connection to the mainland of North America, some of the circuits terminating in Canada and some in the USA. The cable entered service on 25th September at 6pm. It was withdrawn in The Subscriber Trunk Dialling STD service, whereby telephone callers are able to make trunk calls automatically without the aid of the operator, was introduced into the United Kingdom by the Queen dialling a call on 5th December from Bristol Central Telephone Exchange to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, over miles away - the greatest distance over which a subscriber trunk call could be made at the time.
Afterwards, the Queen operated a switch which put 18, telephones connected to Bristol Central onto the new system. Before STD, Bristol subscribers could dial direct to 2, stations connected to 41 local exchanges outside the city. Afterwards they could dial calls to exchanges, including most of those in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh.
Before STD could be introduced, however, telephone charges, designed for manual operation, had to be simplified. Only then could full automation follow. The introduction of Group Charging Areas reduced as well as simplified the cost of most trunk calls.
For instance, the call made by the Queen to Edinburgh lasted 2 minutes 5 seconds and cost 10d 4p ; under the old charging system the call would have cost 3s 9d 19p. Original members were the former monopoly holding telecommunications administrations which handled operational and regulatory functions.
Up until the early eighties the CEPT dealt mainly with administrative, technical and operational tasks, but sovereign and regulatory functions gradually grew in importance.
A second model, Answering Machine No. The ICT computer was introduced. This was punch card controlled and used electronic valve logic. As well as the above two Elliot ICL computers were also introduced. These used magnetic film storage.
The series of telephone designs was introduced by the Post Office. It was much lighter than previous designs with lightweight components and a new easily cleaned plastic material, available in a range of six attractive colours, marking the demise of black as the standard telephone colour.
The familiar 'curly cord' connecting the handset to the telephone now also made its first appearance. The series was designed for the Post Office by W. Avery of Ericsson, but owed a distinct debt to the Bell The new policy was result of a report entitled, Telephone Service and the Customer on a visit by a Post Office team the previous November to study the telephone system in the United States.
Anticipating the greater role that would be played by automation in the system, the policy was intended to ensure that customers received a friendly service when personal contact was made.
A striking feature of the policy was that "subscribers" were henceforward to be known as "customers", and that operators in particular were to be released from the strict rules which governed what phrases they were allowed to use when speaking to customers.
It was noted at the time that for the previous 54 years operators had not been allowed to say "Good Morning" when taking a call, only such formal phrases as "Number, please".
As part of the policy, social surveys were conducted to discover what customers wanted, and an organisation set up to develop facilities to meet their need as far as possible. The policy was promoted within the Post Office with signed copies of booklets outlining the new approach being sent to everyone in the telephone service. The booklet stated, "The aim and purpose of the telephone service is not only to serve, but to please the customer.
Everything must be subordinated and surrendered to that aim. We must study their wishes all the time; we must then satisfy them by a service which is courteous, pleasing and speedy. In the Areas, Telephone Managers held local press conferences, and posters were put up in exchanges.
The first versions of Pay-On-Answer coinboxes on public payphones were introduced and began to supersede the Button A and B models Bristol had the first one. They were necessary following the introduction of STD in major towns because the A and B boxes could not be modified to cope with automatically connected trunk calls.
The introduction of decimal coinage in made another modification necessary. Thereafter, there was only one further modification before Pay-On-Answer payphones were phased out.
Plans were made in to update the entire payphone system by exploiting the advantages of electronic technology. It was decided that the new system would be based on the pre-payment approach with a refund of unused coins where appropriate. New dialling codes, preliminary to the start of subscriber trunk dialling in London, were introduced in the London Director Area on 6th April. TAT 2 was taken out of service in after 23 years of service. A car radiophone service for vehicle users was introduced in South Lancashire on 28th October.
A credit card service for inland and overseas telephone calls was introduced on 1st March see also entry. The cable pressurisation scheme was extended to include local cables from exchanges to cross-connection cabinets.
This was the first time that the lightweight submarine cable, developed by the Post Office in , was used in service. The station was designed to track communication satellites and through them to transmit and receive telephone, telegraph and television signals. The station used a British-designed dish-type aerial which was the first of its type.
Dish-type aerials were later adopted throughout the world for satellite communications. The station took part in the first transatlantic television transmission made via an artificial satellite - Telstar. The first broadband active communications satellite, Telstar was launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral on 10th July. It circled the earth once every minutes at a height of between and 3, miles. The day after it was launched, Telstar was used to transmit the first high-definition television pictures across the Atlantic.
A design in aluminium by the architect Neville Comber, it met with initial approval from members of the public, but failed to withstand the rigours of British weather. Only five aluminium examples entered service, four in London and one in Coventry.
A further half dozen were commissioned in cast iron, but it is not known where they were erected, if anywhere. The aluminium prototypes continued in service for the next twenty years. It was taken out of service in after 23 years of service. New clocks using a revolving magnetic drum replaced the original speaking clock introduced in The pips were not recorded on the drum but were derived from an oscillator. Like the first clock, the second speaking clock had its accuracy calibrated and corrected by referencing to a time signal from the Royal Greenwich Observatory, broadcast by Rugby Radio Station.
She was to be heard until Mr Brian Cobby replaced her. Like its predecessor it was an answer only model, but with a longer message facility of up to three minutes , this second version was more suited for use on information lines. Its first use was in Birmingham, for a "Dial-a-Prayer" service. Datel services were introduced, enabling data to be transmitted over private telegraph circuits and the telex network.
The following year, Datel service were extended to enable data to be sent over private telephone circuits and the public telephone network. Datel services subsequently became available to a number of European countries and the United States. Originally having a membership of eleven, there were over member countries in , the UK being the second largest shareholder. Goonhilly goes live as Aerial No. It was designed to carry aerials for the Post Office microwave network covering some stations throughout the country, including the Post Office satellite earth station at Goonhilly.
The Tower - the focal point for this network - and the four-storey building below are equipped to handle , simultaneous telephone connections and to provide 40 channels for black and white or colour television. It was partly to meet the growing demands of broadcasting that the Tower was opened, enabling the use of microwaves instead of landlines.
Postmaster-General Anthony Wedgwood Benn, opened the Tower to the public on 19th May the following year, accompanied by Sir Billy Butlin who had taken the lease on the revolving restaurant on the 34 th floor. It was designed to sway not more than 20 centimetres almost 8 inches each way in winds up to mph. There are 4, square metres 50, square feet of glass on the outside, set in stainless steel window frames.
The Tower Suite conference area, metres feet above ground, revolves two and a half times each hour. Nylon tyred wheels running on inner and outer circular rails support the rotating structure which weighs 30 tons. During that first year the lifts between them travelled nearly 70, kilometres. The fare for everyone, whether dining or not, was 4 shillings 20p and half price for children.
The country was shocked when a bomb placed by a terrorist bomber on the 31 st floor of the Tower exploded at 4. A warning had been phoned to Purley exchange at 9pm the previous evening, but despite a search nothing had been found, and the call had been thought to be a hoax. The result of the bombing was a tightening of security that left the Tower largely closed to the public on a permanent basis.
The restaurant remained in operation until when its lease expired, when it was also closed to the public except for hospitality events or charity fund-raising functions, such as Comic Relief. Trial installations of electronic equipment for telephone exchanges with a capacity for up to telephone lines were brought into service at Leamington Spa on 25th March and Peterborough on 10th June.
The public radiophone service for vehicle users in South Lancashire was extended to the London area. Hilaire-de-Riez, France. It was retired in after 22 years of service. It was completed to its original specification in The US Department of Defence continued to support both networks. Two more computers are introduced in the Research and Development Department.
These are Elliott models. AFN had become essential with the development of direct international dialling as the mixed letter and number combinations were insufficient to meet the needs of expanding service. This innovative design by STC, half the weight of the more traditional type telephone, originated in when the Post Office decided it needed a luxury telephone to add to its range.
Towards the end of the Post Office settled on the design by STC, and in placed a contract for 10, units. The first example of the Trimphone was presented in May by the Postmaster-General, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, to a newly wed couple in Hampstead in a ceremony marking the installation of the ten millionth telephone to be installed in Britain.
The new design was trialled in the London North West Telephone Area in the same year, before becoming available throughout the country in in three two tone colour combinations. By there were 1. The Trimphone was an entirely new and lightweight design, which among its novel features incorporated the receiver and microphone in the earpiece as a composite unit. The user spoke into the handset in the normal manner, but the sound was carried up inside the handset to the microphone.
Because the handset was hollow, as opposed to the solid mouldings of earlier phones, this was the first telephone with the feature of which most modern phone users are now wary. If the user attempted to place a hand over the microphone in order to make a confidential aside, the sound was still transmitted inside the handset with embarrassing results.
Another feature was a tone call device in place of the conventional bell, which had a volume control to suit the preference of the subscriber. A transistorised oscillator connected to a miniature loudspeaker produced the warbling tone. However, possibly the most striking out of many new features was the luminescent dial, which glowed green in the dark. This effect came from a small glass tube of tritium gas, which gave off beta radiation and made the dial fluoresce.
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