A Visit to the Archives |
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A group of THG members went along with Ivor Flint on Friday 23rd April 1999 for a tour of the BT Archives in Holborn, London. |
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At a first glance, the BT Archives is simply an unimposing telephone exchange of 5 floors with the almost obligatory extensions which were added over the years. However, this is not a place to miss. Despite its unobtrusive appearance, the building is significant in that it was built as London's first automatic exchange in 1927, and was the home of the first Speaking Clock (TIM) from 1936. It is also believed to house some of the earliest System X switching equipment in London. | |||||
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| Organisation & Remit | ||||||
| The Archives are part of the Secretary's Area, within the vast
organisation of BT, and are legally bound to carry out certain activities,
unlike the (closed) BT Museum which until recently came under the Corporate
Relations division. [Currently a review is underway to investigate the potential
of a major heritage project which might encompass the many telecommunication
collections within the UK. " The Museum still exists, but not as a place
to visit!" ]
There is some overlap between the work of the Archives and the Museum, the simplest difference being that one houses mainly 2 dimensional information (paper), while the other deals in 3 dimensional items (e.g. telephones). |
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"BT Archives: Preserves the historical information of British Telecommunications plc and its predecessors from the early part of the nineteenth century up to the present day, effectively the history of telecommunication services in the United Kingdom and from the UK to overseas. Records produced before the date of privatisation are classed as public records under the Public records Acts, 1958 and 1967. BT Archives undertakes the company's statutory responsibilities under these acts to preserve and make available public records to members of the public after 30 years, and for this purpose has been appointed an "official place of deposit for public records" by the Lord Chancellor." | |||||
How do they do that? |
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| Records are collected from a variety of sources by donation
or internal transfer, loan and occasional purchase. BT is obliged by law
to keep historically important records prior to privatisation and were it
not for this many collectibles may not have survived. BT is proud of its
heritage, but not to the point of overspending and a keen eye is kept on
the balance sheets.
Only records selected for permanent preservation are held in the Archives. Customers' contracts, and more 'day to day' business papers are stored at a central unit handled by a contractor, and only a very small proportion of these will ultimately be selected for preservation. In any case, current records are (rightly) not available to the public. Exchange circuit diagrams and other technical drawings previously produced and held in local Drawing Offices (which are nowadays mainly defunct) are retained on microfiche, also separate from the Archives. Book binding and other necessary services are contracted out, to freelance commercial conservators who learnt their trades with national archives repositories such as the Public Record Office or the British Library. Group Archivist, David Hay is responsible for the onerous task of deciding (aside from the obligatory rules) which records are to be destroyed. Even so, there is scope to preserve more recent publicity and newly created material and thus the Archives are steadily growing... |
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| History | ||||||
| The Archives came into being approximately 13 years ago and
gradually expanded; moving (in 1990) into a small section of
Telephone House, 2-4 Temple Avenue, London, EC4 - originally
the headquarters building of the National Telephone Company - as well as
having an outstore at London Colney in Hertfordshire. Telephone House
was (and still is) an architecturally impressive building adorned with NTC
logos and 'cherubic' sculptures holding early telephone instruments, topped
off with a statue of the winged messenger (BT's arch rival in the early
days after privatisation) Mercury. The building has recently been cleaned
as part of its refurbishment into legal offices, and is well worth an external
viewing.
In spite of the very reasonable rent, and listed staircases, the building was clearly not suitable for the dedicated storage of archive material, hence the more recent move (in July 1997) to Holborn. |
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| Today | ||||||
| The whole facility is a completely refurbished, purpose built
area within what was previously a Strowger equipment floor, in
Holborn telephone exchange. The incoming/ sorting and cataloguing area
was once the battery room and the original parquet wooden flooring remains.
The storage shelves are contained within a fire-retardant area, which can withstand ingress of fire for between 2 to 3 hours, either from within the enclosure, or outside of it. The temperature and relative humidity are closely controlled, in the region of 55-60 degrees Fahrenheit and 50% - 60% respectively. The fluorescent lighting is shielded to cut down on ultra-violet radiation to protect the many irreplaceable documents, and monitored fire and intruder alarms are in operation as additional safeguards. As you enter the storage area, all you can see are just a few shelves filled to capacity, with the hint of further rows beyond the darkness. As the lights are switched on, more and more shelves are visible, rather like a large library, but with row upon row of boxes and files and more boxes, books, and endless gangways. With a closer inspection the truth dawns when you realise that there are literally hundreds of thousands of pamphlets, leaflets, publicity material, telephone directories, photographs, films and microfiche of just about every aspect of the telephone service. The scale is so great as to be almost incomprehensible. Altogether, the Archives collections occupy almost 2,500 linear metres of shelving, which translates to many miles of filing and an awful lot of reading! A shelf of telephone directories covering just one year, but for the whole of the UK, seems so insignificant amongst the racks and racks (approx. 12 feet high) of similar publications. A complete set of PHME leaflets takes up another row or two of shelves, the scale is very hard to quantify. The normally large Kardex cabinets (used for more secure storage) look tiny in comparison to the towering shelves of the remaining archives. The card/poster storage is less well marked, although the computer records probably make up for this. Examples are held of Buzby posters, the short lived Talkabout 0055 (chatline services) and line drawings/ detailed plans of the Telephone House from whence the Archives moved and a who's who (or wanted gallery of faces) from the circuit development labs. |
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| What DO they hold? | ||||||
| The public searchroom contains among other things, an extensive
set of IPOEE journals, so neatly bound that you'd think the books were printed
in complete volumes rather than 4 issues. The same goes for the POTJ and
the 'Official' 'List of Exchanges' that go up to 1985 at which time the records
went onto a computer database and were no longer printed. Other books include
the 'Post Office Magazine' and 'Post Office Circulars' all of which are lost
in the sheer scale of the shelves for which you need the pedestal foot-stand
to reach the top shelves.
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Above the counter can be found an A & B coinbox, a Doll's Eye PMBX 1+3 and a 200 type black tele (probably taken from a Special Faults board as it had the metal mounting bracket still attached) as well as a handsome clock in a dome type wooden case from a telegraph office. |
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| Using the Facilities | ||||||
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The desk/ study area is a very spacious working environment with comfortable, swivel, office type chairs and a supply of the obligatory pencils/book request forms and price list. A row of microfiche reader/printers are placed by the window area and a computer based programme can be called upon to search the catalogues for a particular item. |
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Be sure to pick up a copy of 'Events in Telecommunications History'-a potted history of key facts from the early days to 1991 (an up to date version of this handout will be available within the next few weeks). |
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| Summary | ||||||
| The Archives is an excellent and valuable resource to visit,
but is not geared up for great numbers of visitors as it does not
have the staff or the access to the building (the lift is tiny) to
make this fully viable. The records might not stand too much handling
either: the sets of telephone directories had to be microfiched due
to excessive use by solicitors and people researching their family trees.
To keep pace with current trends, more use of electronic publishing, e.g. electronic indexes and historical information on the web is being considered. However this poses some problems with copyright and just how much information should be freely available. Greater publicity is needed to attract the right sort of visitors who will benefit from access to this wealth of information. The concept of BT Phonecards (and others) being so collectible have proved extremely popular with everyone, so perhaps the Archives could market postcards or videos of 'times gone by' (by mail order) as a means to earn money in order to secure their future.
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| Addendum | ||||||
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Images
courtesy of BT Archives, to whom acknowledgement is given.
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