End of an Era | BT Heritage

[@Beatlefan67]

Back then it was a pleasure to go to work. I'm overcome with nostalgia for those days...

[@johngellard1187]

Yes but then "work manager" was introduced and it all went downhill from there....

[@msimms-lp5qw]

@@johngellard1187 Bound to happen once all the other service providers came into the market

[@johnrauner2515]

That's because back then people mattered so there was a thing called civility which we have lost today. Today money and profits come first. People are just a necessary evil, to be treated as disposable items like all those fuses they pull with no regard to them. Corporate ethics back then were not damaged by the single minded profiteering matra installed by Thatcher who believed things would be much better if profits came before people.

[@monteceitomoocher]

If anyone invents a time machine dial in 1960 and I'm off out of this dystopia that apparently is called Britain, i no longer recognise it as such.

[@barbarajacob]

May I suggest that maybe the fact that you were younger might have something to do with it?

[@adamsaint2890]

Came for the telephony equipment, stayed for the groovy AF sixties music

[@MrCobo04]

Last time i saw this it was on roll of film being transferred to video on a telecine unit i ran for BTHeritage

[@rickdouglas8224]

I'm on BT digital voice & still running a BT746 Telephone complete with twin bell ringing & dial tone. Not dead yet 😊😊

[@misterwhipple2870]

9:50 If my last name was "Lillicrap", I would change it. 15:00 E II R, 1968. That is a beautiful touch, one we will never see again. Farewell to the Queen!

[@danpreston564]

The jumps in sound make the music sound like it’s in all sorts of avant garde time signatures.

[@jporritt]

Astonishing to see the rope based commission/decommission methods!

[@rockypupoxo]

The company i worked for disassembled most of the BT exchanges back in the 90's , the amount of money they made from scrapping was astronomical.

[@Beatlefan67]

Yeah, and it went to shareholders and a big rise for the CEO rather than back to the country where our fathers and forefathers paid for it from their taxes.

[@rockypupoxo]

@@Beatlefan67 Always the way mate , thats why everything is so expensive here is because the greedy bastards like the shareholders want bigger dividend payouts and everyone else can go fxxk themselves.

[@glpilpi6209]

And in some cases with blood , WW2.

[@EE12CSVT]

​@@Beatlefan67I just love anticapitalists when they emerge from beneath their rock. Cough, pension funds, cough.

[@daviemac9925]

Brings back memories! I worked on a manual exchange and then worked on a modern one until I started Nurse Training.

[@michaelmiller641]

I didn't realise manual exchanges lasted that long!

[@roachtoasties]

Catalina Island still had a manual exchange up until 1978. There were still some remote areas after that where an operator had to manually reach the number.

[@geoff1201]

We moved to Upminster in the summer of 1969. The phone at our previous house had a dial, the Upminster one did not. To make a call we had to lift the handset and wait for the operator to ask for the number we wanted.

[@12crepello]

Newbury exchange in Berkshire didn't change from manual to crossbar until 1974!

[@AlAl-wu7mp]

I spent over 40 years with outside business telephone systems. We went from rooms as big as parlors to video recorder size equipment that handle 1000 times more telephones, than no phones at all just programs on computers. One thing for sure as telephone equipment progressed alot of jobs were lost.

[@IndaloMan]

Happy memories of commissioning STC TXK3 and TXK4 switches around Glasgow and Leeds in late 70s. Converted to TXE4 and then TXE4a early 80s then off to Saudi Arabia to commission PRX-A 205 and 5ESS-PRX #goodolddays

[@timsmith57]

When i started work in 73 we ìnstalled new floors of strowger in various exchages

[@Myelin.chief1709]

Theme music is class

[@mohm7047]

As a 40 year old, obviously I've never experienced this, but my goodness we came a long way and I must say it's refreshing to see this even though I wasn't around then. The changeover from manual to automatic exchange was really a very big project, no margin for error, even though there must have been a fallback. But credit to those who were involved in this. I wonder those telephone operators, the changeover to be honest meant job losses, I wonder how they transitioned to another job or changed careers.

[@MJK1965]

No, they were transferred to other offices. They handled local 100 traffic, and 999 calls.

[@roachtoasties]

I'm unsure of any fallback, if the new crossbar switches failed. They pulled out thousands of fuses. To put them all back in place I think would have taken days. :/

[@hypercomms2001]

I'll give you about another 15 years, and soon you'll be saying as part of your daily speech..." In my day..." Something to look forward to!

[@rayoflight62]

This exchange had a maximum of 10,000 phones connected to it. You can tell it by looking at the size of the new permutation racks, or more precisely, by looking at the power supply current meter, which shows 180 Ampere of current. Our analogue phone lines are powered by -48 V DC, with a line current of 20 mA, or 0.02 A each. So, with 180 Amps, 9000 phones are connected concurrently. In many places, the limit of 10K phone terminals max has been a lingering problem until electromechanical exchanges have been replaced with the actual computerised types, which uses in-band DMTF (multi-tone) for dialing, and are capable of carrying caller ID information and later, ADSL for data and Internet. Very slowly the PSTN are being replaced by their fully digital counterparts. This change impacts the customers negatively, as all telephone terminals in homes must be replaced. In certain cases, the terminal needs electrical power. The wisdom, at this point, should be to replace this "last mile" directly with a fiber optic.

[@MrCobo04]

I worked on a 20,000 SXS unit when first started with the company

[@keithammleter3824]

Rayo, your calculation is clearly nonsense. not everybody will be calling at once - in fact they can't, because phone companies limit the number of trunks to what's actually needed. A general rule of thumb valid in western counties is that telephone usage peaks at 1/10th - so a drain of 180 amps means a total of 100,000 phones, not 10,000, assuming your 20 mA per phone is valid.. However, other equipment usually found in telephone exchanges adds to the current.

[@straightpipediesel]

@@keithammleter3824 You're the one spewing nonsense. Upminster, through the 2000's had a population of around 10k, so there would be no use for 100,000 lines. 10,000 would be more than enough for the area. Further, the largest manual city telephone exchanges built were around 10-20k lines. Manual exchanges poorly scale because operators can only reach so many lines and you can only have so many appearances.

[@keithammleter3824]

@@straightpipediesel If you think a 10,000 line exchange can have 9,000 of them all talking at once, you believe in Father Christmas and that he personally delivers presents all other the world simultaneously using 6 flying reindeer. The intensity of telephone traffic is measured in units called Erlangs. One Erlang is one active call per available line. In the developed world at the time of this video, typical traffic intensity was usually around 0.08 erlang to 0.1 Erlang during the busiest hour. Due a poor economy and relatively high call charges, typical intensities in Britain were less, around 0.6 to 0.7 erlang with unusually low trunk call volumes. But let's assume the area had 0.1 erlang. Taking your 20 mA per call, a draw of 180 amps corresponds to 180 / (0.02 X 0.1) i.e., 90,000 lines, not 9,000. Regarding scaling: A manual exchange is basically a common control (i.e., computer or marker control) exchange with the electro-mechanical brains (markers in old telecomms terminology) replaced by humans. It is therefore just as scalable. The Bell System in the USA built a manual network in the USA that far outweighed what Britain had. Manual networks used principles like trunk switching the same as later auto networks. The Bell System only began to change to auto exchanges in the 1930's because they began to have difficulty recruiting enough telephonists as their customer base grew. This is clearly spelt out in the Bell System Technical Journal and in their corporate advertising. If a given area warranted more than about 30,000 lines (30,000 lines was about the largest Bell Exchange), you just had 2 or more standard manual exchanges in the one building cross-connected via trunk positions. This means 3 operators per call instead on just one, so by the 1920's, technical means were worked out so that operators were provided with dials and other tricks so that the caller only spoke to one operator.

[@straightpipediesel]

@@keithammleter3824 That wasn't my point and yes I know that, and I even know that the original 5ESS had an analog multiplexer before the codecs so that only 8 of 64 lines could be off hook at any time. What you're delusional is thinking that that manual exchange had anywhere close to 100k lines. It simply wasn't possible, not to mention completely unnecessary for a London suburb. The original comment of not more than 10k lines is 100% correct, while you are dead wrong.

[@GEORGE-jf2vz]

Nice video. Thanks for posting it.

[@billsimpson604]

Only a few years ago AT&T abandoned the buried copper lines in my rear yard and installed fiber optic lines in the front, & into my living room. Never thought I would see a fiber optic line into my single family home. That is amazing. I think by 1970 only a few long distance calls still used an operator in the USA. Now, nearly all that mechanical equipment is history. I worked with a man who had been employed as a telephone operator. We were just starting off at a rather low paying government job. I asked him why he quit a job paying substantially more, and was surprised to hear him say that he couldn't take all the verbal abuse from customers. He said it gradually got to him, so he quit.

[@mikeswatches2480]

The Party at the end looked good !

[@stevegee7593]

Soon the new building will be gone. The Exchange equipment went during the 1980/90. The lines where transferred to the system X at Romford.

[@misterteaification]

So if the exchange equipment is no longer there, what has been happening there since the 1980s/90s?

[@bilbp41]

I’m 56 now and I was trained on plug boards Plessy and monarch switchboards when I was working for HSBC few months I used to press system

[@MrFoxy1951]

Sad how the job went to the dogs - I finished up as a C3 (TO) riding round chaining stepladders up so that contractors couldn't use them! BT were never any good at utilising the skills that employees were trained to do - it pretty well all went to contract.

[@David-uf8ex]

The whole country has sadly gone to the dogs now

[@marcse7en]

The narrator managed to say "Mr. Lillicrap" WITHOUT laughing! ... I certainly couldn't! 🤣

[@john07973]

Mr Lillicrap top man, not a woke bone in his body and I bet he didn't earn an obscene salary

[@sarajoolae8197]

YES MR LILLYCRAP - 100% ROCKSTAR!!

[@sarajoolae8197]

DO FORGIVE ME MR LILLICRAP I MIS-SPELT YOUR NAME. - A TRUE GENTLEMAN AND LEGEND.

[@ObviousSchism]

11:54 It's interesting that they play dramatic music for the engineers to listen to while they perform the changeover to the new system.

[@fairalbion]

AT&T started implementing crossbar switching in the late 1930s & was already moving in the direction of replacing it with electronic switching at the time this film was made. It would be interesting to know why the UK held back for so long.

[@dingo137]

They'd already standardised on Strowger and we're hoping to go straight to electronic, but the electronic took longer than expected. At least, that's the story that's usually reported - I don't have personal knowledge.

[@Spookieham]

Telephone take up was a lot slower in the UK. It only really accelerated in the late 50s onwards

[@alanmackenzie2811]

"If only Post Office engineers were so attractive..."

[@Beatlefan67]

We were! (In a manly way)

[@nicholasm5465]

the out of sync soundtrack makes this ridiculously (hetero)sexist remark combine with shots of the male ('non-attractive') workers - but this was the era of everything being viewed through a male and straight prism - therefore 'attractive' can ONLY mean young 'dolly birds'. So limited, so fucking sad - such a relief to realise how far we have come from those bleak, dingy, blinkered and male-outlook dominated days - where a factual information film about telecommunications has to fall back to the trope of saying how sexually attractive are the (only) women who appear in it.

[@gavc6442]

Lol 😂

[@keithrose6931]

I prefer a transgender engineer everytime ! 😂You know where you are with them 😂😂😂

[@VLC8792]

And by the end of 2025 that new automatic telephone exchange will be replaced by VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system.

[@12crepello]

That "new' exchange would have been replaced by digital in the mid eighties.

[@peterbates4696]

I worked at st Botolphs telex exchange.. I use the term “worked” loosely bc most of our time was spent in city pubs

[@Grid56]

Love the moggie 1000s. The rope disconnect method too, hi tech😂.

[@GeorgeLiquor]

I'm legally changing my name to H.G. Lillicrap

[@sarajoolae8197]

WHAT A LEGEND 👍

[@edwardalexander9486]

06:00 Cranbourne Gardens Upminster - windmill is Grade II listed.

[@andersonpyaban8042]

very interesting...

[@seamusellis1450]

Pity the soundtrack is out of sync..

[@keithammleter3824]

This film is dated 1970. It says the exchange is the first to get crossbar. But the relays shown are the old fashioned BPO 3000-type that date back to 1950 or earlier that require periodic adjustment, not the maintenance free relays that other administrations used with crossbar. Bad film editing or was the BPO a really old fashioned government department? The second, actually - In Australia our then old fashioned government department phone company APO started installing crossbar (with "modern" maintenance free relays) back in 1960 - which was years and years after the Americans. they showed ceramic formed wire wound resistors of a design introduced about 1900 too.

[@keithammleter3824]

A poorly trained operator shown at 9:18 - she pushed a plug home by the cord, not the plug. This causes cord faults - often frustratingly intermittent.

[@geoff1201]

Some women just can't be trained 😂

[@nickhubbard3671]

15:32 crossbar equipment and racks looks the same as installed at Plessey Kingsthorpe Northampton summer 1973

[@bobtuck5820]

worked at Kingsthorpe in 74/75

[@nickhubbard3671]

@@bobtuck5820 I worked at Wellingborough as well. Learning cable colour code and Urdu slang.

[@tonyknight9912]

Amazed they were fitting crossbar in 1970 ?

[@gregodianne]

Crossbar was being installed in Westhoughton, Orrell (wigan) in 1975 /6

[@cjmillsnun]

Why? TXE4 wasn't until 1976 and System X not until 1980. So Strowger or Crossbar were the choices.

[@joemaldonado3]

this too will happen too when the GB/UK goes to fibre service in 2025....

[@anthonyglee1710]

There was a windmill in Upminster?! Phone training too 😂

[@ukar69]

It’s still there!

[@geoff1201]

There still is, and it works 🙂 kzbin.info/www/bejne/iGfceaSpqtifpbc

[@philipmcdonagh1094]

I'm confused was there not a mechanical exchange before this type. A massif room with banks of spinning carousels. I thought it went manual to mechanical to automatic.

[@intercity125]

That's the step-by-step they refer to - this is the later crossbar type

[@roachtoasties]

The operators at the Upminster Exchange must have been lactose intolerant, since they only needed five pints of milk delivered each day. ;)

[@roachtoasties]

Would Mr. Lillicrap have crapped in his pants if after pulling out all the connections to the old exchange, the new exchange didn't work?

[@philipmcdonagh1094]

That system would recover more quickly from a solar incident or an EM pulse. Digital is not as robust.

[@greenpedal370]

Rubbish. I've seen exchange buildings and overhead carrier systems hit by lightning which was all dissipated to ground with only the odd line card burnt out. The trunk network. processor, memory and billing systems are all very well protected.

[@joshgalka9414]

Nice!

[@Bruce-vq7ni]

"laying cable 😂 is an expensive business" -

[@Alan_UK]

The commentary says "for forty years all calls including local ones had to be connected by an operator". Surely most/all exchanges would have been automated with Strowger in the 20s for local calls, with operators being used for trunk calls until STD. According to a Wikipedia article the UK started STD on 5 December 1958 but doesn't say when the roll-out was completed but 1970 when this film was made seems reasonable.

[@daviemac9925]

1976 Portree Isle of Skye the last manual unit was disconnected.

[@robertlewis4216]

04.06: is that Jimmy Hill?

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

That's some terrible delay between the video and audio

[@astronutgg]

No one talked about the women being made redundant

[@Ron-u1z]

Who cares

[@KarlHamilton]

They did, actually. Watch it again.

[@anythingbootneck]

Don’t forget the men who worked the night shifts.

[@Feakre]

You mean the women who they mentioned were going to jobs in other exchanges?

[@buy.to.let.britain]

back when people would call random numbers and do heavy breathing down the phone. they were great days,

[@mbak7801]

Not a good time to have asthma though.

[@hormelinc]

Why not a TXE4 instead?

[@seamusellis1450]

Because the TXE4 wasn't introduced until 1976...

[@lawrencebishton9071]

Tell me what sat o lights do ???? And what happens if you stand in 1 over time in the center of it

[@KarlHamilton]

Yes

[@BrayTube]

People laugh, but I can definitely see someone from today-times wanting to call their kid Lillicrap. I mean, why not? But if you don't buy that I'm sure I can sell you on the law firm Weaver, Clark and Lillicrap.

[@markhodgson2348]

New travel possible photos and EEG

[@mikemainer3009]

It continues to boggle the mind how the Brits can be proud of so many things like being decades behind in their telecomminications network compared to the United States and many parts of Western Europe. Crying out loud, crowing about replacing a manual switch with a 1950s crossbar switch in greater London in bloody 1970??? For goodness sakes, U.S. cities were replacing crossbar switches with 1ESS switches by the mid-1960s and the only place you would see a manual exchange in 1970 U.S. was in a museum.

[@tomw86]

You have to remember the UK was bombed, and had a much harder time of things post WWII than America.

[@john07973]

Fantastic bygone era no DEI then but the influence of the nanny state was starting - totally unnecessary hard hats and safety glasses

[@lawrencebishton9071]

You know the London economy they say exists some were they don't know we're they just know exists well so do I

[@thecorbies]

Pardon?

[@lawrencebishton9071]

Scrapping lockdown me any one ask no did that BOLLOX

[@lawrencebishton9071]

Think it's happening again no