Epsom, Britain’s First Public Automatic Telephone Exchange

Abstract

Within three years of the invention of the telephone in 1876 attempts were being made for the partial machine switching of calls. A step-by-step system was developed by A.B. Strowger of the USA in the years 1889 to 1892 and from the beginning of the twentieth century was the first automatic exchange system to come into widespread use there. Conditions in Britain at the time were not conducive to the adoption of machine switching while telephone service was divided between the Post Office and the National Telephone Company (NTC) but the Post Office undertook a review of USA practice. The Post Office completed the purchase of NTC in January 1912 and instituted a series of trials of available automatic systems. The first of these, the public exchange at Epsom, Surrey, opened in May 1912 using the Strowger system. The paper describes the installation and operation of the equipment at Epsom and how it was received by its users and the wider public. In 1922 the Post Office decided to standardize on a development of Strowger step-by-step for British requirements. Ironically, when Epsom exchange required enlargement in the early 1930s it was instead replaced by a new manual exchange. A few examples of equipment from the pioneer British automatic exchange systems survive in preservation.

Keywords:

• telephone
• exchange
• automatic
• selector
• machine switching
• Strowger
• Epsom
• Post Office

I am grateful to the staff at BT Archives, London, in particular David Hay, Sian Wynn-Jones and Dave Shawyer, for their assistance in identifying documents, scanning illustrations and for permission to reproduce material in their care. I must also thank the volunteers and staff at Bourne Hall Library Local History Centre, Ewell, for their ready help in finding large-scale maps and other material. The library of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Science Museum Library were valuable for consulting many secondary sources, as was the Science Museum Documentation Centre for files relating to objects held by that Museum. The Science Museum Photo Studio assisted in preparing images for publication. Alison Taubman, NMS curator of telecommunications, kindly provided details of items held by National Museums Scotland. Newspaper references were obtained from the British Library Newspaper Library, Colindale, and from web sources.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Liffen

John Liffen is Curator of Communications at the Science Museum, London. He joined as a Museum Assistant, the most junior grade, in 1969. He had a long spell between 1975 and 1984 as assistant to Keith Geddes on the Telecommunications collections, providing practical contributions to several major exhibitions. A promotion to the transport collections followed, involving among other things the logistics of the movement of various full-size railway locomotives in and out of the Museum building. In 1998 he joined the team brought together to devise the permanent exhibition Making the Modern World. Opened in June 2000, this is a large synoptic gallery displaying many of the Museum’s most important historic objects set in the context of their times. He was appointed to his present post in 2003. Since then he has worked on the content of several exhibitions including Dan Dare and the birth of high-tech Britain (open 2008–11) and is currently attached to another project team developing a forthcoming major new permanent gallery with the working title Making Modern Communications.

Correspondence to: John Liffen. Email: [email protected].