[HN Gopher] Telephone Exchanges in the UK
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Telephone Exchanges in the UK
Author : petecooper
Score : 66 points
Date : 2025-06-15 19:33 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (telephone-exchanges.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (telephone-exchanges.org.uk)
| biofox wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| My 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...
| toyg wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Sort of, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Tower#Secrecy
| biofox wrote:
| Two more examples of exchanges that were kept secret:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_telephone_exchange
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_telephone_exchange
| snthd wrote:
| >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-e...
| ipdashc wrote:
| In a similar vein, but for the US: https://www.co-buildings.com/
| (And a shoutout to https://long-lines.com/)
| tdeck wrote:
| If 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://m.youtube.com/@ConnectionsMuseum
|
| I feel like they're not well known and there's no place like it!
| evolextra wrote:
| I know one guy who make something cool with old Telephone and
| electronic stuff https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/
| jonatron wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Our 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 wrote:
| someone 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| Affric wrote:
| The roadworks during my youth were endless. It was
| maddening. Never occurred to me that it could have all been
| telcos.
| JdeBP wrote:
| I know someone who is still waiting for City Fibre, who dug
| up xyr road last year, to get around to actually offering a
| service.
| matt-p wrote:
| Like most things that's half true.
|
| It's true you don't want a telecom worker laying a gas pipe,
| however you can coordinate this stuff if you want to.
| Typically the deepest utility works first then backfills just
| to the level of the next utility and so forth. However timing
| is critical, the second utility must be ready to work as soon
| as the first is done and so on.
|
| The biggest reasons they don't is mostly (in this order)
|
| -They can't time their work to be at the same time as 3 other
| utilities.
|
| -They can't work out cost and liability sharing, if the last
| utility to work does the reinstatement and takes liability
| for it then the telecom company will always pay while
| electric typically won't pay anything as it's in the middle.
| The legal demarcation between utilities is also much less
| clearly defined.
|
| -Contractors typically do all work, not actual utilities and
| it's in their best interests to dig the road up five times
| (one for each utility) rather than just once. The same goes
| for everyone else who gets paid when the road is opened;
| including, often, the local government (for permits).
| _joel wrote:
| You 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/
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Really, 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 wrote:
| Combination of Ericsson and GEC/Plessey/BT "System X" (see
| 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.
| merlynkline wrote:
| Before 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.
| backendEngineer wrote:
| and it's gone... 429 :D
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