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Telephone Exchanges in the UK
- biofox 1y agoThis is an impressive feat of cataloguing! Considering the telecom system is at the bedrock of almost all modern technologies, it really doesn't get enough love or attention in the public mind. The dull derelict-looking, and often graffitied, buildings that house the system doesn't reflect just how cool the infrastructure is.
- rwmj 1y agoMy physics teacher in the 1980s (sadly RIP a few years ago[1]) told me that the location of telephone exchanges was a UK state secret. The theory was that the Russians would nuke them destroying the country's ability to communicate, but as their location was a secret that outcome could be prevented. 40+ years on, I wonder if any of that was actually true? [1] https://johnchess.blogspot.com/2019/11/david-welch-1945-2019.html https://johnchess.blogspot.com/2019/11/david-welch-1945-2019...
- toyg 1y agoThe dullness is eerily consistent. Even in the age of privatisation, when everything is a brand, these buildings are devoid of markings. So it might well be true, we just stopped worrying about it once the cold war was officially over (once we realized the Russians already knew everything they needed anyway).
- edent 1y agoSort of, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Tower#Secrecy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Tower#Secrecy
- biofox 1y agoTwo more examples of exchanges that were kept secret: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_telephone_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_telephone_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_telephone_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_telephone_exchange
- lxgr 1y agoWait, what? What else were people supposed to assume about the purpose of a huge tower with very noticeable horn antennas (widely used for long-distance phone calls over line-of-sight microwave at the time)?
- snthd 1y ago>As our [1978] trial started, witness after witness from security sites tried to claim that openly published information was in fact secret. In a typical interchange, one Sigint unit chief was shown a road sign outside his base: > Q: Is that the name of your unit? > A: I cannot answer that question, that is a secret. > Q: Is that the board which passers-by on the main road see outside your unit’s base? > A: Yes. > Q: Read it out to the jury, please. > A: I cannot do that. It is a secret. >Official panic set in. The foreign secretary who GCHQ had bullied into having us accused of spying wrote that “almost any accommodation is to be preferred” to allowing our trial to continue. A Ministry of Defense report in September 1978, now released, disclosed that the “prosecuting counsel has come to the view that there have been so many published references to the information Campbell has acquired and the conclusions he has drawn from it that the chances of success with [the collection charge] are not good.” >My lawyer overheard the exasperated prosecutor saying that he would allow the government to continue with the espionage charge against me “over [his] dead body.” The judge, a no-nonsense Welsh lawyer, was also fed up with the secrecy pantomime. He demanded the government scrap the espionage charges. They did. GCHQ and Me, My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers -- Duncan Campbell https://theintercept.com/2015/08/03/life-unmasking-british-eavesdroppers/ https://theintercept.com/2015/08/03/life-unmasking-british-e...
- JdeBP 1y agoIn hindsight, that does seem a little ridiculous; yet it was indeed the thinking. One could see where the exchanges were by simple dint of visiting a place. Soviet spies would just have had to walk around a bit. Of course, nuclear weapons wouldn't even have had to specifically target exchanges in order to disrupt electronic communications as they already were by the 1980s. It was amusing to learn a decade ago that the U.S.S.R. military had far more complete maps of many parts of the U.K. than Ordnance Survey published. Apparently down to Soviet spies just walking around a bit, playing tourist.
- ajb 1y agoU.S.S.R. military had far more complete maps of many parts of the U.K. than Ordnance Survey published. Although amusing, note that its than the Ordnance Survey published. I.E. they had the data, it was just classified. Also, it's fairly clear that the Soviet maps were mostly derived from OS maps. Looking at my street, for example, they have it in a pre-WWII configuration which they could only have got by starting from a rather old OS map. So they clearly only checked for differences in areas they thought important, such as government or military areas - they didn't have people mapping the whole UK. Still it's probably true that one can get more information about certain areas in these Soviet maps than in extant OS maps.
- qingcharles 1y agoI looked up the local telephone exchange on this site for the town where I grew up. It's a big building. I went past it thousands of times and never knew what it was. It can't have been auspiciously labeled in any way or I would have poked around as a curious geeky kid.
- logifail 1y ago> the location of telephone exchanges was a UK state secret I found myself wondering whether the locations of electricty substations powering critical infrastructure might count as "secret", for instance the three[0] substations that power Heathrow Airport. Obviously one of them isn't secret any more more, having gone up in flames rather spectacularly on 21 March 2025. [0] "Heathrow relies on three electricity substations" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6283577llqo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6283577llqo
- thorin 1y agoIt wasn't very secret, at least for local exchanges as I went into many in the north-east of England with my dad as a kid.
- ipdashc 1y agoIn a similar vein, but for the US: https://www.co-buildings.com/ https://www.co-buildings.com/ (And a shoutout to https://long-lines.com/ https://long-lines.com/)
- tdeck 1y agoIf anyone is interested in telephone exchange technology at all, I highly recommend checking out the Connections Museum in Seattle. They have multiple eras of electromechanical switching equipment up and running, and a huge collection of cool old phones, teletypes and payphones. They also have a great YouTube channel with very knowledgeable people. https://www.telcomhistory.org/ConnectionsSeattle.html https://www.telcomhistory.org/ConnectionsSeattle.html https://m.youtube.com/@ConnectionsMuseum https://m.youtube.com/@ConnectionsMuseum I feel like they're not well known and there's no place like it!
- evolextra 1y agoI know one guy who make something cool with old Telephone and electronic stuff https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/ https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/
- g-mork 1y agoDon't miss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfOzyIib7wU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfOzyIib7wU for some young folk urban exploring what turns out to be a still active exchange, full of ancient and modern tech
- tdeck 1y agoThis is surreal to watch!
- tobinfekkes 1y agoAnother excellent museum is the Kodiak Military History Museum at Fort Abercrombie, on Kodiak Island, Alaska. It has some old working telephone and teletype systems. You can watch the physical switching equipment do its magic. It is truly awesome. The raw speed and accuracy of the mechanical systems is almost unbelievable.
- indrora 1y agoI'm a volunteer there. It's always wonderful when we get groups who come through who have someone that worked for Ma Bell or who did work on the old analog telephone exchanges in the world. We're opening a second location like the first in Denver, to take over the hard-to-visit one in the corporate head office.
- jonatron 1y agoI visited an exchange back in 2009, when Local loop unbundling (LLU) on ADSL was big, and fibre was limited to large business and datacentres. The huge generator was probably more interesting than the racks of concentrators. I'm not sure how much battery back-up power time the new PON systems have, I assume less than a generator backed system.
- ricardo81 1y agoOur old countries (and their tech) building on top of old. Developing countries have less of a hassle with implementing something based on state of the art. Lots of hassles with getting new phone lines, new power lines et al in the UK based on old agreements and a nationalised infrastructure. Please stop digging up roads and everything for arbitrary telecoms companies based on some deregulation, some collaboration please :-)
- f4c39012 1y agosomeone from the local gas company told me that the reason the utilites don't work together is that they can't because of rules - electric and gas need to be kept separate for safety, and the surrounding soil means water leaks can be absorbed away from other utilities' pipework. I didn't dig any deeper
- kimixa 1y agoI feel there's a generation of Brits burned the wave of random telecoms companies digging up major roads for years for cable, only for the results to be pretty much useless by the time it's done as ADSL and existing POTS lines could do pretty much the same thing without any more digging. The words "Diamond Cable" still fill me with dread to this day. They dug up half our village to then offer no service.
- JdeBP 1y agoI know someone who is still waiting for City Fibre, who dug up xyr road last year, to get around to actually offering a service.
- rcxdude 1y agoCity Fibre has worked alright around where I live. It was also about a year or so after most of the digging (now a few years ago), but it's been nice to have actual fibre internet (through a different ISP, since they just do the infrastructure).
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- _joel 1y agoYou can go and play with an old branch exchange, with all the whistles and er, bells at "This Museum is (not) Obsolete". Run by Sam from Look Mum No Computer. If you're ever near Ramsgate in the UK. https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/ https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/
- linker3000 1y agoSee also in West Sussex: https://www.amberleymuseum.co.uk/explore/explore-communication/rural-telephone-exchange/ https://www.amberleymuseum.co.uk/explore/explore-communicati... https://www.amberleymuseum.co.uk/explore/explore-communication/connected-earth/ https://www.amberleymuseum.co.uk/explore/explore-communicati...
- cph123 1y agoHe also has a fascinating YouTube channel, I'm a big fan. Lots of old musical equipment and experiments in addition to telephony.
- heraldgeezer 1y agoReally, its own internet system before the internet. Massive load of calls. The routing has to be correct. I never understood it before working in telecom, but phones numbers are unique... for routing, like IP-addresses. And it could never go "down". In the 80s it was all digial too (Ericsson switches) and had to be real-time.
- psychotaurusaqu 1y agoCombination of Ericsson and GEC/Plessey/BT "System X" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_X_(telephony) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_X_(telephony)). Erisson AXE10 was known as "System Y" in the UK and a hedge against buying exclusively System X equipment.
- gjvc 1y agosee also http://www.samhallas.co.uk/repository/po_docs/system_x.pdf http://www.samhallas.co.uk/repository/po_docs/system_x.pdf and http://www.samhallas.co.uk/repository/journals/BTEJ/BTEJ%20Vol%203%20Part%204%20Jan%201985%20System%20X.pdf http://www.samhallas.co.uk/repository/journals/BTEJ/BTEJ%20V... and this https://www.academia.edu/39809466/System_X_The_history_of_the_development_of_the_UKs_first_computer_controlled_telephone_switching_system https://www.academia.edu/39809466/System_X_The_history_of_th... by http://www.kingdom-technology.co.uk/malcolmhamer.php http://www.kingdom-technology.co.uk/malcolmhamer.php
- merlynkline 1y agoBefore modern digital electronics, telephone numbers were literal routes - when the turned dial on your phone ran back to zero, a corresponding 10-pole motorised rotary switch at the exchange turned and connected you to one of 10 lines. This connected you to another such rotary switch for the next digit, until eventually you were connected to the final destination. The ingenious Strowger exchange.
- lxgr 1y agoInvented by a paranoid undertaker out of business interest, apparently: "Strowger, an undertaker, was motivated to invent an automatic telephone exchange after becoming convinced that the manual telephone exchange operators were deliberately interfering with his calls, leading to loss of business." I wonder if the phone company was actually out to get him!
- backendEngineer 1y agoand it's gone... 429 :D
- bravesoul2 1y agoDistributed curiousity attack
- dboreham 1y agoInteresting to see Kinghorn in the database (01592-89) because I toured the exchange as a child sometime in the late 1970s before it was brought into service (my Dad knew a bloke who worked for GEC). iirc it was a TXE4 system then, or at least of that generation. Building in a very poor state of repair now. Probably hasn't been painted since 1979!
- arethuza 1y agoI walked past there the other day (on the Fife coastal path) and wondered what the shabby building was - I had assumed it was an abandoned light industrial unit.
- bravesoul2 1y agoI recall there was a voting system by BT circa 2002 to get your local exchange upgraded to "broadband" (i.e. not just 56k dialup) if it wasn't already.
- GJim 1y agoNo. It certainly wasn't a voting system. Rather, it was a decent enough system used to help gauge demand in a given area. (Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of demand for ADSL in university towns, and much less in retirement-town-by-the-sea).
- bravesoul2 1y agoVoting may be the wrong word but I think if you lobby your local area to submit their interest you'd have a good chance of getting it activated. There was a threshold and a tracker on the website.
- penguin_booze 1y agoNow, where are the STD jokes?
- ThePowerOfFuet 1y agoThe site won't let me past the initial verification page in either Firefox or Vanadium. Is their content really so sensitive that it must be "protected" to such a degree?
- domh 1y agoWorking fine with Firefox on Android here. Desktop or mobile?
- oniony 1y agoThe Avoncroft museum of buildings in Bromsgrove, near Birmingham, UK, is worth a visit. They have a bunch of old telephone boxes all working and hooked up to an exchange they have on site. I spent like an hour talking to the guy in there about it all, pretty fascinating. https://avoncroft.org.uk/avoncrofts-work/special-collections https://avoncroft.org.uk/avoncrofts-work/special-collections
- ehecatl42 1y agoIf you find yourself in that part of the world, there's also a carpet museum in Kidderminster, and the Black Country Museum in Dudley. A little bit further north and then there are a slew of industrial museums in Ironbridge.
- kjellsbells 1y agoA very worthwhile series on the UK's engineering history is the Geek's Guide to Britain, from the Register. Lots of little museums and stories about the Industrial Revolution and beyond: https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/geeks_guide/ https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/geeks_guide/
- Neil44 1y agoI was going to post this, I had a fab time in that little room with all the click-clacking gear.
- thorin 1y agoMy dad worked at BT and used to take me to different exchanges at the weekend normally on Saturday mornings. I guess he claimed a day in lieu for working a couple of hours and then we went for lunch or pottered around the shops. In there were all sorts of interesting things. Piles of discarded electronics of various eras. Several computers and terminals for connecting to mainframe systems. I remember a Sinclair QL and Amstrad PCWs I think. He would let me play around with the terminals, no idea what OS was on there maybe VAX or VMS, use the printers and Microdrives. I was really interested in all that stuff as a kid but didn't really have anyone to learn from as my dad was more of a lineman, having started in the Royal Signals. Fun times!
- voidUpdate 1y agoI used to live pretty much opposite the village exchange. It was just a very boring and nondescript little building, backed up by the picture on that website. I bet it was much more interesting inside though
- dugmartin 1y agoMy dad was a telephone engineer/manager with GTE in the US. As a kid in the mid 1970s he used to take me with him to the local exchange building to deliver donuts to the guys on duty (he was that kind of boss). The security was interesting - there was a tube built into the masonry with a 90 degree angle that had a mirror. He would pick up the phone on the outside wall and say his name and an identifying number and then the door would buzz open. The building was a few stories tall and had no windows, which I think was a Cold War thing. We would deliver the donuts to the break room which usually had at least one guy smoking in it (it was the '70s). A couple of times we went into the switching room which still had rotary dial switches clacking away as people dialed in numbers. There was an overwhelming smell of ozone in the room. It was all very cool to 5 year old me.
- mojo74 1y agoShout out to Milton Keynes Museum for their archive of handsets old and new as well as interactive examples of telephone exchanges: https://miltonkeynesmuseum.org.uk/collections/view-our-collections/#Telephone https://miltonkeynesmuseum.org.uk/collections/view-our-colle...
- bdsa 1y agoMy dad (who worked for BT in various positions) claims he was involved with the decision to move the exchange in our/their village from one end to the other. Coincidentally, closer to the end in which we lived, which I gather would have a non-trivial impact on our internet speed. I think this probably coincides with the time period we got ISDN, very early, and I was amazed by the concept of _always connected_ internet. I can still vividly remember watching GoZilla download a game demo at 7kb/s, stunned and excited.
- bloomingeek 1y agoAlthough I never went into one of these buildings, in the early 80's I was a sub-contractor burying cable for SWB. I was always amazed at all the property they controlled. I had access to all their construction yards, which were spread out all over the city, some of them in the suburbs. Protecting these yards from theft was always a nightmare for them.