Post Office Engineering Department

NB This is a sub-section of General Post Office

1870 The nationalisation of the private telegraph services created a need for a specialist department of the General Post Office devoted to engineering. The first Engineer-in-Chief, R. S. Culley, was appointed on 29 January 1870 and many of the technical staff formerly employed by the old private telegraph companies formed the nucleus of his new department. At this time the existing telegraph lines terminated at railway stations, usually some distance from the towns, so the first job of The Post Office engineers was to extend the lines to post offices within the towns. New routes were also added, with 740 miles of wire laid under London's streets during the first few months of 1870.

The British Isles were split into divisions for the purpose of local engineering control. These divisions, each under control of a Superintendent Engineer, who was directly responsible to the Engineer-in-Chief, later became known as engineering districts. The first Engineer-in-Chief's Office was in Telegraph Street, London, at the Central Telegraph Office which had previously been owned by the Electric Telegraph Company. A move to new headquarters, GPO West in St. Martin's-le-Grand, took place in 1874.

1881 the Government authorised The Post Office to offer the public telephone as a service, in addition to telegraph services, and the first Post Office Telephone Exchange was opened at Swansea in March.

1892 William Preece became Engineer-in-Chief of the General Post Office.

1909 The GPO established a separate research department

1912 the Postmaster General took over the National Telephone Company and for the first time a unified telephone system was available throughout most of Britain. Approximately 19,000 staff were transferred over, of which about 7,000 were employed on engineering work, adding to the 9,000 already employed in the Engineering Department. Of the 3 Engineering districts formed in 1901 to deal with London's telephones, the North district was abolished at the transfer, but within a few months the whole of the Metropolitan area was put under the control of one superintending engineer for the London Engineering District. It remained the smallest engineering district in area, but was the largest in the value of plant and the number of staff.

WWI The Post Office Engineering department in London designed telephone and telegraph equipment that was used in the trenches and enabled military operations to be directed on a scale never attempted in any previous war. It also developed a national air raid warning system.

The rapid expansion of the GPO's telephone services and the development of other forms of telecommunication led to an increase in the work of the Engineer-in-Chief's department. It remained primarily engaged in developing, providing and maintaining telecommunications services, but it also had responsibility for matters concerning electrical power and, as time went on, the mechanisation of postal operations.

1969 The Post Office Act of 1969 led to the GPO becoming a public corporation. The department and the office of Engineer-in-Chief changed radically with the engineering work of the new Post Office Corporation divided between the increasingly separate postal and telecommunications businesses.

1980 British Telecommunications, trading as British Telecom, was formed

1981 British Telecom became independent of the Post Office.

1984 British Telecommunications was privatised, becoming British Telecommunications plc.

1988 RoMEC (Royal Mail Engineering and Construction) was formed in April 1988 as a self-contained profit centre. Its customer-base extended to every part of The Post Office. The RoMEC Group comprised six core product groups in the specialist areas of security, manufacturing, maintenance, datacommunications, installation and consultancy.

See Also

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Sources of Information

• National Archives [1]