The engineering telephone exchange in Bush
Control Room on October 20th 1964. There were direct lines to
all studios and transmitters. The panel above shows the state
of every uniselector (for routeing studios to networks or
outside sources to studios, etc.).
The call buttons on the two panels between the operators
should be white (the white objects you can see are the signal
lights): some idiot on a night shift had got bored and
coloured some of them black to make a pattern reading 'HELP
EMX'. Obviously this went down badly with his superiors, who
made him colour the rest in so that at least they were all the
same colour.
Click
here to see a plan of Control Room from the 1968 edition
of the operating manual ('BU1').
The plan shows MCP occupying the space which was originally
two control positions. The corridor adjacent to the ASU and
clock rooms also had control positions on the other side.
The ASU was the automatic network-to-transmitters switching
unit; the room also contained the large number of
uniselectors. The clock room contained two pendulum master
clocks, automatically corrected by GMT, which drove all the
technical area and office clocks. The wall along the
left-hand side of the plan overlooked the Strand (north
side).
Below the plan is a photo taken in 1964: mouse over (Mac/PC)
or tap (phone/tablet) the plan to see a red dot showing the
camera position.
© Roger
Wilmut. This site is not associated with the BBC