Baynard House – Queen Victoria Steet
“The first of the British-designed processor-controlled digital switching systems designated ‘System X’ was installed in Baynard House, London. It was a tandem junction unit which switched telephone calls between around 40 exchanges. It was brought into service on 1 July 1980 and formally inaugurated in September. The development of ‘System X’ exchanges was the linchpin of the policy to modernise the existing network by replacing analogue plant with digital switching centres interconnected with digital transmission links.”

Baynard also sports a ‘Totem Pole’ sculpture in the courtyard, depicting the ‘Seven Ages of Man’ with the suggestion that communications are never ending, evolving and encompass the very young to the very old!

Mondial House circa 1978 ( now demolished) – Upper Thames Street
This unusual stepped design of fibre glass clad concrete housed two of the UK’s largest international telephone exchanges at a time when directly dialled international calls had become technically possible, reasonably affordable, and most desirable.

Paul Marshall
January 11th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Having established that ‘television’ counts as communications in this instance, I would like to add a few suggestions. This is the first offering – pre World War II addresses. It’s not exhaustive and many have *interesting* stories associated with them that would take too long to tell here.

John Logie Baird and Baird Television Ltd. (British developer of electro-mechanical television) addresses:

1. 22 Frith Street, Soho Nov. 1924 to Feb. 1926 first 30 line demonstrations.
2. Upper Floor, Motograph House, Upper St. Martin’s Lane, WC1 Feb. 1926 to Jan 1928
3. 133 Long Acre, WC2 Jan. 1928 to July 1933
4. Crystal Palace, Sydenham July 1933 Fire 30th Nov. 1936
5. Worsley Bridge Road, Sydenham, Kent (Baird Television Ltd 1938)
6. Home address: Swiss Cottage, Box Hill, Surrey. Home address from Jan. 1929.
7. Home address (and private laboratory): 3, Crescent Wood Road, from summer 1933

Scophony Ltd. (designers and manufacturers of a unique television system) addresses:

1. Dean House, Dean Street, Soho 1932 -1935
2. 2 Thornwood Lodge, Campden Hill, Kensington, W8 (Scophony 1935-40)

Marconi-EMI Ltd. (the ‘all electronic CRT based system manufacturers in Great Britain) addresses:

1. Blyth Road, Hayes, Middlesex (1934 to 1946)

BBC (adopter and broadcaster of television) addresses associated with television activities:

1. Studio BB Sub-basement, BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, W1A 1AA (1932-1935 experimental 30 line service).
2. Alexandra Palace, Wood Green, N22 (BBC ‘high definition’ transmission studios and transmitter, 1935-1939)

More to follow – post war up to about 1970 to include Television Centre and other studios/transmitters.

1/ Holborn Telephone Exchange itself has some history – the first automatic exchange in London and the first home of the Speaking Clock -which is of course represented at the Science Museum in the new Measuring Time gallery (well a mark two prototype designed for Australia, but the same technology).

2/ Also Telephone House on the corner of Temple Ave and the Embankment (next to the Temple Inn). Built as the HQ building of the National Telephone Company in 1898 and from the outside just as it was originally built, including stone cherubs holding telephone instruments and NTC logos.

3/ Would Dollis Hill be too far out? Could link to the bit of Colossus in the Science Museum computing gallery? And to thermionic valves for that matter

4/ Dare I suggest BT Centre in Newgate Street, previously the site of GPO West aka The Central Telegraph Office? The hub of the UK telegraph network and the largest telegraph station in the world. Reputedly the only building the Luftwaffe hit that they were actually aiming at, extensively damaged in December 1940. Earlier, Marconi gave the first demonstration of his new system of wireless telegraphy before members of the Post Office administration on 27 July 1897. With the transmitter on the roof of the CTO and the receiver on the roof of GPO South in Carter Lane 300 yards away (the site of Faraday Building in the poster you saw today), signals from the transmitter were satisfactorily recorded. This event is recorded by a plaque on the outside of the current BT Centre near the main entrance.

5/ Euston – one end (the other at Camden Town) of the first telegraph link (I think the world’s first), along the line of the London & Birmingham Railway, demonstrated by Cooke and Wheatstone on 25 July. In a real sense the beginning of the communications revolution, and lots of early telegraph instruments in the Science Museum if not the first one itself.

6/ Queen’s Theatre to Canterbury hall (not the UCL one, the Lambeth one?), first telephone line in the UK between two separate buildings, in 1877

7/ 36 Coleman St (site of) – building no-longer there but the site of the UK’s first telephone exchange in August 1879, opened by The Telephone Company

8/ 11 Queen Victoria Street – again no-longer there but the site of the first Edison Telephone Company Exchange from 6 Sept 1879

9/ Experimental automatic Strowger exchange exhibited at Winchester House, Old broad Street in 1897

10/ Gilbert Scott’s original model K2 telephone kiosk of 1924 which won the Post office competition for a new phone box, still standing outside the National Gallery and looks like the proper K2 kiosks installed throughout London from 1927 except that it is wooden instead of cast iron.

11/ First automatic telex exchange opened at Shoreditch exchange in 1958 (Mia wanted a Shoreditch link?)

12/ First experimental electronic exchange at Highgate Wood in 1962. We don’t seem to own the building still so need to dig around exactly where it was.

13/ World’s first digital exchange opened at Empress Exchange near Earl’s Court in September 1968. Again, not sure exactly where it is yet

Unfortunately there is nothing to see of Cooke & Wheatstone’s pioneer telegraph line that ran from Euston Square to Camden Town; it was obliterated by railway works in the 1870s and 1880s.

It’s not in Central London, but the role of the National Physical Laboratory in Bushy Park, Teddington has never been adeqautely acknowledged. There are many internet pioneers still in the town today.

Saw your call in the Home SSN Bulletin.

I have one Bedford QLR (soon to be two) equipped with WS19 and HP Amp., receivers R107 and R209, a Field and Fortress telephone exchange, phones – Tele L, Tele J, Tele F. They are all working just as they did 50 to 70 years ago.

This (mobile) museum can go anywhere (4×4) and takes part in the International Museums Weekends.

Worth a mention is the Kingsway exchange site in tunnels under High Holborn, now up for sale. Major and secure trunk telephone switching centre during the cold war era.

Siemens got a mention above, but their Woolwich site was much more than just a cable factory, turning out exchange equipment and millions of telephones.

Similarly TMC at Dulwich. SE21, were a major manufacturer. ATE had an office at Strowger House, Arundel St WC2. Creed made their teleprinters at Croydon.

Lots of telephone rentals companies: British Home and Office Telephone Co. Ltd., Autophone House, 73 Great Peter St, SW1; General Telephone Systems Ltd, 44/50 Osnaburgh Street, London NW1 etc.

As has been remarked the list could be endless. Where do you stop?

Cheers,
Sam Hallas

My feeling is that history of communications makes most sense when considered broadly and in context. So “communications” is not restricted to the electrical.

We also have to keep in mind what mobile *users* might understand by “communications”.

Jon