Telephone Exchanges

I think it fits in perfectly with the green countryside surrounding it, not sure about the white one though.

Sadly, by March 2010 it was not so pretty ! Completely vandalised inside, and most windows gone

Yuk ! so do I

Don't beat about the bush, say what you really think !

I was in Washington (USA) a few years ago, and in the front garden of the British Embassy, is a lovely Red Telephone Box.

Dare not, not on the forum Midland Red !!!! My swear jar is overflowing now !

Seeing these old phone boxes, I wonder, in general, just how little they are now used. With most people having mobile phones, it's amazing there are any of these left.

Having been an engineer working on TKs in the past, I tend to look on them a bit different to most people. I considered them to be no more than a public convenience, I will not go into detail. Although as seen as somewhat of an icon to the rest of the world to us engineers it was not so appealing. When the TKs were being decommissioned they were being bought by companies at the price of £27 and shipped abroad mainly to the USA. I bought a few for my friends etc. I know one that still exists in Rubgy, full of plants and flowers. Such a shame really with a bit of tlc they could be made to look very nice, I hope I have not put a downer on this subject. Your comments please. Colin

We had one at the end of the road by Weston Lane, it was continually being vandalised, I only had need to use it once and of course it was out of order. So eventually they removed it and I don't think anyone misses it except the kids who were always hanging around it.

Ok Norm, well that was a big problem but I think GPO were obliged by law to provide TKs and to get one removed required a lot of legal work. Don't think it applies so much today. Although the public and commerce in general had a big downer on the GPO mainly for their monopoly on telephones I don't think they understood the service they had to provide. One funny story. Mr Kilpatrick who owned the Royal Court did not like GPO at all, well PO as it was then. I was called in to commission his new private telephone exchange after he had just signed a contract with a new company that was allowed to compete with PO. Now I arrived on the Monday and he took great pleasure in ridiculing us. "It's about time someone showed you how it was done" he said. By Friday the company supplying the equipment had gone bust. Guess who took over the contract? Yes you got it, PO. As you can imagine he was not amused and knowing him as we did we kept a low profile on comments. One final note, a friend of mine won an award from PO for designing an alarm system for the six TKs that stood under the bridge by the water feature next to BHS in the Precinct, they were always being robbed. The TKs were linked to the Police Station in Little Park St, and it worked. Colin

Hello Radford kid, yes you could say I know a little about the Coventry Telephone Area. Sad to hear of my ex colleague, Bluey, we were good friends during our days at BT. Very happy memories with many many stories, none which could possibly be told on this or any other forum.

On the subject of payphones, or as they were called officially, Public Call Offices, the PCO in Smithford Way about half way between The Locarno and Hillman House was in fact one of only six experimental prototypes in the country. They were known as the Kiosk Number 7 designed by Neville Conder using such materials as aluminium and the extensive use of glass and were considered to be way ahead of their time.

I chanced upon this discussion through Google. In the early sixties I was apprenticed to the GEC and was taken to see an electronic exchange in Coventry which worked using Dekatron (or Decatron) valves. They were neon with a ring of 10 anodes. As a crass youth it seemed to me rather old fashioned - the transistor had been invented. I was told that the GPO wanted to _see_ the dialling happening, because they were used to Strowger mechanical selectors. I was also told that after installation it gave wrong numbers when the sun was shining. Obviously the sun never shone at Telephone Works where it was developed. Did it stay in service for long? Is any of it preserved? I worked on ICT 1301 computers that GEC built in Spon Street and the last one has recently moved to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. In it's previous home near Ashford, Kent it could sometimes be persuaded to run for about a minute!

Welcome to the forum mikes Thank you for a most interesting post - I don't understand it - but most interesting I'm sure some of our members will be happy to respond

Hi mikes from me too The noise of those uni-selectors rattling away in the automatic exchange lab (Stoke) where I worked for a time, early 1960s, still rings in my ears now. Each selector looking for a spare line before returning to its starting position, time after time. All driven from a dc battery supply of 50 volts. I had to plug a "butinsky" devise into the circuits to see if I could make contact with another member of staff with a similar "butinsky" in another part of the lab. The name butinsky is iconic BUT IN SKY. It resembled what looks today like an eighties hand held telephone with a dial on it. It did what it said, by butting in to a telephone line to here a conversation or just test the line. It was a school holiday job, where the company offered me a permanent job, before I later moved into accounting.