Central Telegraph Office (CTO) | ||||||||
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In 1870 the UK General Post Office took over the work of the Inland
Telegraph companies by an Act of parliament. Probably a good idea as
the private companies were only really interested in the large cities, which
were the most profitable areas. The price paid for acquiring the 4
private telegraph companies was £10 million. The Central Telegraph Office (CTO) was originally located in Telegraph Street, London, but in 1874 relocated to St. Martins Le Grand, London. It was called the Post Office West building or known by most as the Central Telegraph Office or CTO. At it's height, the CTO, employed over 5000 people. The CTO was the central hub for telegrams in London and had Telegraph connections world wide. Before the telephone became common place and years before International Direct Dialling, the telegraph was best way to communicate nationally and worldwide. This was achieved firstly by wire and later by Beam Radio (Empire Radio Service) to international destinations. The cost was high and telegrams were charged by the word, so people cut down on words and started to use codes. Different code books (i.e. Acme and ABC codes) were available in which sentences would be described as one word. An example code is BYOXO ("Are you trying to weasel out of our deal?"). The CTO building had a public counter to accept Telegrams, a Phonogram section (a telegram which is telephoned to a Post Office instead of being handed in over the counter, or is telephoned by the Post Office to the addressee instead of being delivered to him by a messenger), local sorting with pneumatic despatch, national/international telegrams and picture transmission. In 1930, 28.4% of inland telegraph traffic was dealt with by Morse instruments and 13.5% by telephone. Originally, sending Telegrams involved a Morse key tapper (a good operator could send about 40 words a minute), but this was overtaken by punching a paper tape with the message (this produced a code of dots) and then running the punched tape through a sender. On receiving, the message would be directly printed onto a paper tape, which would be gummed onto a telegram form. The message could also be relayed to another office in the UK for local delivery. When ready for hand delivery the message would be gummed to a telegram form and enclosed in a sealed envelope. Telegram boys delivered the envelope either by foot, bicycle or motor bike. Other countries used different systems and the CTO had to use machines that were compatible. This continued until the introduction of the teleprinter, working to international standards. The term "telephone-telegram" was an internal name given to a telegram which is telephoned from one post office to another in the course of its transmission. On the introduction of Telex a Printergram service was introduced which was a telex based Phonogram service. The CTO was also connected to the Greenwich Observatory time clock and a Chronopher was used to transit GMT to Big Ben, Admiralty Time Balls, Telegraph offices, private renters, Exchanges and Post Office buildings. Click here for the clock pages.
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Last revised: November 18, 2023FM2 | ||||||||