The BT Archives is an

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

preserving the documentary heritage of the British telecoms company BT and its

public sector The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, pu ...

predecessors. It is designated an official place of deposit for

Public Records Public records are documents or pieces of information that are not considered confidential and generally pertain to the conduct of government. Depending on jurisdiction, examples of public records includes information pertaining to births, deat ...

, for those records created prior to BT's privatisation in 1984. The records include minutes, subject files, photographs, film and advertising material that tell the story of

telecommunications Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

in the UK and from the UK to overseas, from the formation of the private

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

and

telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...

companies in the nineteenth century to the present day.

Major historical collections

The earliest records held by BT Archives are those of the

Electric Telegraph Company The Electric Telegraph Company (ETC) was a British telegraph company founded in 1846 by William Fothergill Cooke and John Ricardo. It was the world's first public telegraph company. The equipment used was the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, ...

from 1846. Other private telegraph companies whose records are held are the British Electric Telegraph Company, International Telegraph Company,

Submarine Telegraph Company The Submarine Telegraph Company was a British company which laid and operated submarine telegraph cables. Jacob and John Watkins Brett formed the English Channel Submarine Telegraph Company to lay the first cable across the English Channel. An un ...

, Electric and International Telegraph Company,

British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company The British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company (also called the Magnetic Telegraph Company or the Magnetic) was a provider of telegraph services and infrastructure. It was founded in 1850 by John Brett. The Magnetic became the principal compe ...

London District Telegraph Company The London District Telegraph Company was formed in 1859. It was renamed the London and Provincial Telegraph Company in 1867. The management were connected with the British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company and the firm aimed to compete with ...

, United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company, Universal Private Telegraph Company,

Eastern Telegraph Company The Eastern Telegraph Company was a British telecommunication company that operated undersea telegraph cables between the United Kingdom and India and countries on-route as well as cables from the United Kingdom to North and South America. It wa ...

British Telegraph Company In the nineteenth century, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had the world's first commercial telegraph company. British telegraphy dominated international telecommunications well into the twentieth. Telegraphy is the sending of ...

, Irish Submarine Telegraph Company,

English and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

and the

Anglo-American Telegraph Company The Atlantic Telegraph Company was a company formed on 6 November 1856 to undertake and exploit a commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean, the first such telecommunications link. History Cyrus Field, American businessman and finan ...

. BT Archives also holds documents relating to the UK telegraph service of the British

Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

; the private companies being brought under the control of the Post Office in 1870. BT Archives also holds records of the private telephone companies and of the Post Office telephone services. The private telephone companies represented are the Telephone Company Limited (Bell's Patents),

Edison Telephone Company of London Limited Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...

, United Telephone Company, Lancashire and Cheshire Telephonic Exchange Company Limited, Northern District Telephone Company,

National Telephone Company The National Telephone Company (NTC) was a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, British telephone company, which from 1881 to 1911 consolidated smaller local companies in the early years of telephone adoption. The British government natio ...

, Western Counties and South Wales Telephone Company, Corporation of Glasgow Telephone Department and London and Globe Telephone Maintenance Company.

Post Office Telecommunications BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broadband and mobile ...

activities continue concurrently and subsequently to the private telegraph and telephone companies. These are documented in the records of the Post Office telegraph and telephone service 1864-1969 and the Post Office Corporation (Telecommunications division) 1969-1981. From 1 October 1981, British Telecommunications, trading as

British Telecom BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

, severed its links with the Post Office and became a totally separate public corporation. Records of British Telecommunications (public corporation) are held from 1981 until privatisation in 1984. Records after privatisation, of British Telecommunications plc 1984-2001, and of BT Group plc from 2001, continue to be preserved and made available for researchers in line with BT's heritage policy. The British Phone Book collection is a major resource for

genealogy Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

and

family history Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kins ...

, containing a near-complete set of

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

telephone directories A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that ...

from the first one issued in 1880. For preservation reasons the phone books are generally accessed on

microfilm A microform is a scaled-down reproduction of a document, typically either photographic film or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original d ...

, and the phone books 1880-1984 are digitised and have been made available online. BT Archives cares for more than 500,000 images and 1,000 film titles. Selected images can be found on BT Archives online image gallery.

Location and access

BT Archives is based in Holborn Telephone Exchange on

High Holborn High Holborn ( ) is a street in Holborn and Farringdon Without, Central London, which forms a part of the A40 route from London to Fishguard. It starts in the west at the eastern end of St Giles High Street and runs past the Kingsway and ...

in Central

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

and is open, by appointment, to public researchers on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10:00am – 4:00pm. There is no access charge. Holborn was the first public automatic exchange in London in 1927, see

Director telephone system The director telephone system was a development of the Strowger or step-by-step (SXS) switching system used in London and five other large cities in the UK from the 1920s to the 1980s. A large proportion (c. 70% to 80%) of telephone traffic in ...

. Descriptions of the historic collections are available on the BT Archives online catalogue. Full access, acquisition and preservation policies can be found on th
BT Archives website

Partnerships and governance

It is a partner in the

Connected Earth Connected Earth was a UK network of organizations, primarily museums, that preserve the history of telecommunications in the UK. Heritage artifacts are physically sent to Connected Earth partners and other institutions as appropriate, and are b ...

network, the heritage initiative founded by BT in 2001 to safeguard telecommunications artefacts. BT Archives and Connected Earth together form BT Heritage, part of BT's

corporate responsibility Corporate responsibility is a term which has come to characterize a family of professional disciplines intended to help a corporation stay competitive by maintaining accountability to its four main stakeholder groups: customers, employees, shareh ...

programme.

External links

BT Archives official site

BT Archives online catalogue

BT Archives online image gallery

BT's heritage policy

Connected Earth website

Searchable records from BT Archives phone booksDistant Writing
- The History of the Telegraph Companies in Britain between 1838 and 1868 {{Authority control Archives in the London Borough of Camden BT Group Business and industry archives History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom Online archives of the United Kingdom Organisations based in the London Borough of Camden Mobile phone industry in the United Kingdom Photo archives in the United Kingdom

Major historical collections

Location and access

Partnerships and governance

See also

External links