THG - ELECTRA HOUSE

ELECTRA HOUSE

Electra House was the busiest telegraph centre in the world and together with Cardinal House, they were at the hub of the world's international telegraph network. Not only did they handle all British originated traffic, but they also acted as the clearing house for the many telegrams which were received in London for onward transmission to destinations around the globe, this tradition is being maintained today.

The Early Days of Room 2

In the heyday of telegrams, it was said that an Electra House telegraph operator need only to wait outside Room 2 for a few minutes before commencing duty and in all probability he would see the overseas circuit on which he was listed to perform his duty, pass by on an engineering trolley en-route to or from another floor.
There is an element of truth to this story as the advents of the OTRU, MRC and CP9 indeed wrought many changes in the configuration of the Electra House overseas circuits, but despite them all, Room 2 retained those circuits longer than most calling for operator expertise combined with the personal touch.

During its lifetime, the room's acoustic ceiling tiles, which were very receptive to a well aimed paper dart, were also bombarded with the whole gamut of telegraphic sounds - morse keys, buzzers and sounders, undulators with handmade paper amplifiers and countless types of keyboards, autoheads and reperforators; each had their own special sound. To all this add the constant backdrop of operating commands such as ZBY, ZRA, QRM, QRX, RIJAG, POMDU and others which were suited for the occasion but not found in any code book.
It's no wonder that these tiles fell off occasionally!

Room 2 from its humble beginning and later known as the MSU, eventually expanded to full stature to house at one time or another most of the overseas telegraph circuits terminating at London. The chaps working there were the elite squad and one always bowed to the utterances of its hallowed staff, the senior service - as most of them probably ex morse operators. It was the largest operating room in the building.

The Early Days of MSU

Room 2 and others had these overhead air cooling ducts which deluged the operators with cold air in the wintertime. Some joker discovered that tissue paper out of the copier machines made an excellent bung - the outlets of this crude air conditioning unit were shaped like a long cone with the air being blown out of the narrow end. One morning, in Room 2, they had bunged up every single nozzle and everyone sat back happily to regain a bit of body warmth. After an hour or so, the pressure in the ducts built up so much that these bungs were suddenly ejected all over the room making a racket akin to a giant pop-gun and sending everyone diving for cover with the initial fright.

Rcvg on an early DC3-those water wheels lasted 50 years!	The 'characters' were there, some with spurs of gummed slip and urgent labels stuck on the backs of their shoes and paper daggers affixed to their jackets - they were the night staff. Alcoholic pick-me-ups were on hand at the bar in the corner of the canteen so no need to visit the Cheshire Cheese, only a few yards walk away from the back door.

Early Traffic Distribution	OTRU Consoles

The opening of the Message Relay Centre (MRC), Cardinal House in November 1967, taking over from the pioneer in torn-tape systems the OTRU, was poignantly celebrated by a hand-written piece of paper on the notice-board: "Good luck to the Emma C, and all who sail in her".
Around that time, coal trains used to run through the Snow Hill tunnel when exiting Faringdon Street station underneath one end of Cardinal House building, producing a mini earthquake in the top floors. But all did not fare well for the MRC. Within a very few weeks, technical difficulties caused plans to be abandoned to extend the capacity of MRC therefore reopening OTRU. OTRU was retrieved from mothballs, like an old battleship, restaffed and wound up again in 1969 for a second lease of life.

Last days of MSU

The Last Days of the MSU

The CP9 programme which segregated Electra House operating floors into units took effect in February 1973. Room 2 was re-named the Manual Switching Unit (MSU) and survived for 2 more years before the Telegram Retransmission Centre (TRC) arrived and VDU's.

GOODBYE MSU by E.V. Neighbour

The MSU is closing fast
We've almost reached the end
Our 'Paradise' is gone for good
It is the modern trend.

With circuits closing day by day
The room is looking dead
The noise reduced, the smiles all gone
There's silence in my head.

But what was that I heard just now?
A loud exuberant cry
He's breaking you on GLQ
And GA ZBY.

How fast the years have slipped away
Don't you find that's true
They're just a happy memory
Those days on GLQ.

Protected circuits filtered in
To morse we said goodbye
It ain't the same no more we said
It makes you want to cry.

With systems new we battled on
And thought it rather fun
When cycling hard to Sydney
We got a backward run.

Automation came our way
OTRU was the first
They loaded it with circuits
The system almost burst

We overcame those problems
As far as we could see
And then they thrust upon us
The famous MRC.

We then got nicely settled
The world was looking fine
But someone felt disgruntled
And thought of CP9

The staff were widely scattered
To different floors they went
But still that brave and sturdy bunch
Never even bent.

The planning staff were hard at work
Their efforts we now see
The final blow has fallen
They call it TRC

Farewell my friends I'll miss you all
You've all been good and true
I'm sure when we are old and grey
We'll talk of MSU.

I regret never actually working there but worked into "E.H." telegraphically for 20 years. On my few visits there, it had a tremendous 'feel' about the place, we heard stories about telegraphists being 'signed on' by their workmates and were not missed through the whole of their shift and operators regularly doing a rostered night shift and then a day shift on overtime, night after night.
Sadly, 1999 witnesses Electra House Victoria Embankment a ghost of what it was, a mere shell of a building, lonely and forlorn.
Larry Rice OTO1 Birmingham ITAO 1961-1982 11/10/1999 +++++++

Tony Hawkins recalls...

When I worked in Electra House (1968-69), it was the largest telegraph office in the world. Spread over six floors everything was, of course, manual. To give you an idea of the time - there was a 'fax' machine, which transmitted and received for Reuters and Associated Press. Two drums, one for transmission and the other for receiving.

There were no computers; the tubes, 'Lamson' tubes were used to pass messages from floor to floor. They were not the main method of transferral though, that was done by belts which took the telegrams from zone to zone. I remember, we had long long grips to reach up and capture any that got stuck; quite a rare occurrence, actually!

I could tell you some stories re 'service msgs' which nearly caused diplomatic incidents:

As an example, I once relayed a message, it was addressed to Suva (Fiji) - I mis-spelt it, Suba. It took 6 weeks to bounce back from the jungle. I got away with a severe reprimand. The telegram was, of course, about stock prices etc. Couldn't have been 'Happy Birthday!'

As I recall, there were the following rates...

Urgent Min 8 words
Normal 8
LT 22 words, but half the price of normal.
GLT 8 words, but no codes.

Rules and regulations were strictly applied, there was little tolerance for mistakes. On promotion to supervisor, one of the OTO's (Overseas Telegraph Officers) was nicknamed 'skinner' because he liked to issue 'skins'-discipline forms! There were other offices in London, Cardinal House for one. A lot of people wanted to get out of EH. I loved the place. It was, at the time awe-inspiring.

The beginning of the end I guess, was the OTRU (Overseas Telegrams Relay Unit). Where a pilot line was inserted which gave the route destination to electronic switching. The guys on there never communicated with anyone, they just punched out endlessly. This was used at the time for some cities in Europe. The rest of the circuits were a receiver and transmitter. Telegrams were stamped with a number, punched out on a creed machine along with any others for that particular circuit, then the tape was placed in the transmitter. Logs had to be kept and a service test message sent if there was no activity in 15 minutes.

I am afraid once I had finished my training I was off to the commercial world. It wasn't nearly so interesting though. I eventually moved back into the technical side of comms., so I have seen both sides.

Electra House has had an interesting and somewhat veiled history. I would love to see some pictures of the old place; we were not allowed to take photographs!
Click here for more photos

And more memories...

Bob Roberts adds...

I was an OTO at Electra House between 1960-68. Great times. I remember the debacle of the commissioning of OTRU. It became known as the 'OverTime Restoration Unit'.

Michael Vick recalls...

I worked in EH from 1967 more or less continually until 1984, the last few years I was an instructor at the ITTS - it used to be called the SID, Station Instruction Department. I still work at BT but all I can say is nothing compares to the happy days spent at EH.

Couple of things. The OC known as "skinner" was a chap called Eddie Price, I worked with him when I was in room 2. He was OK, as straight as they came and I liked working with him.

Other thing was the picture of the chap on the SARPs* at the MRC (worked there for 8 happy months just before it shut, even though I was press ganged into going ). His name is W A R Smith I remember him as a supervisor at EH where for some unknown reason he was known as "Quantas"

Although EH is sadly no longer there I often pass it and think back to the happy years I had there, it really was a wonderful place to work and I miss it a lot.

* SARPs - Semi Automatic Routing Positions - They were part of the MRC in front of which the OCs sat at the control panel. This gave a nice view of Farringdon Station!!

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