Telex in The UK and Teleprinters I Remember

This article is about my memories of telex in the UK, very much in a past life, the phase of which started in the early 1970s and ended in the early 1990s.

Telex in The UK during World War II

The work of the General Post Office in October 1941. This photograph shows staff at work in the GPO teleprinter room at the Ministry of Information in London.

Photograph by the Division Photographer, Ministry of Information. IWM Non Commercial Licence via Wikimedia.

Obviously before my time, but I like the photo.

Telex in The UK during World War II.
Telex in The UK during World War II

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Three Tees Agency

In the early years of my career, The Three Tees Agency had an excellent Saturday morning training school for telex operators. Their offices were in Ludgate House, Fleet Street, in The City of London. The Three Tees was owned by a lovely lady called Janet Day, and I have fond memories of her and the team.

*The Three Tees Agency was a recruitment and temping agency for Telex Teleprinter and Telephone Operators.

TRG Services

I also worked as a temp for TRG Services (Trevor Ronald Gilbert was the owner), another recruitment agency for telephonists and telex operators. My temp controllers were Clive (head controller) and Janice. Both were great guys, and I have many happy memories of my time with this agency. TRG had their main office in King William Street in The City of London. After a few years, they moved to Lovat Lane, also in the City of London.

My time as a telex operator, was characterised by an abundance of work for temp telex operators. I never had a permanent job throughout this time, and one of these temping jobs lasted for over three years!

The type of work was varied. One day I could work in a small office on a single telex machine, while another assignment might be in a bank with multiple machines and many operators.

5-level Telex Murray Code

The associated image is of a reference card similar to one I used when learning 5-level Murray code. The code represents the International Telegraph Alphabet. Image: User: Huestones with derivative work by User: TedColes, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

5-level International Telegraph Alphabet.
5-level telex murray code

If messages from the telex machine were to be relayed as separate messages to distant machines, the telex operator would have read the tape and identified the start and end of each message. The tape could then be torn off before and after those points. Each separate message on the paper tape could then be relayed to distant machines as necessary.

Paper Tape Could Save The Day

The ability to read tape was useful in many cases. One scenario was the unattended telex machine. Telex messages were printed on continuous rolls of paper. The paper tape mechanism, when turned on, produced a copy on the tape of all telex messages received.

Example of 5-level paper tape with part of a message.
Example of 5-level paper tape with part of a message

If the paper roll ran short, there were no printed messages after that point. However, the paper tape had copies of each message.

The continuous roll of tape could be torn off, fed into a telex machine with plenty of paper roll, and a copy of all the messages could be printed in “local mode”. Local mode was the term for producing messages without a live connection to a distant machine.

Creed Teleprinter No. 15

Brian was the excellent tutor who ran The Three Tees training school. In time I had mastered touch typing and tape reading, thus equipping me with skills that would keep me in constant work for the next 25 years or so.

The telex machine I learnt on at the training school was the Creed Model 444, otherwise known as the Teleprinter No. 15 and commonly referred to by telex operators as the T15.

The Creed Model 444 was introduced by the General Post Office (GPO) in 1966. Source: Creed & Company. Wikipedia. It superseded the Creed Model 7, referenced below.

Creed Model 444, aka Teleprinter Number 15.
Creed Model 444, aka Teleprinter No. 15

Other Telex Machines I Remember

Creed Teleprinter No. 7

This teleprinter, commonly referred to by telex operators as the T7, was first introduced by the GPO in 1931.

The model was specifically produced for the start of the GPO’s telex in the UK service. Source: Hobbs Alan G. Teleprinters for the radio amateur. Online.

Creed Teleprinter Number 7.
Creed Teleprinter No. 7

This teleprinter has GPO badges, which can be seen on the left-hand side of the machine and under the dialling unit to the right of the machine. The GPO was the main supplier of teleprinters to UK commercial enterprises.

British Telecom Cheetah Teleprinter

The British Telecom Cheetah Telex machine was a significant upgrade to the T15 model. To the best of my knowledge, this machine was introduced in the mid-1980s.

While telex terminals with VDU units had previously been available in the UK, I believe the Cheetah was the first British Telecom telex machine with an integrated screen and internal memory that could store messages for future retrieval and sending.

British Telecom Cheetah teleprinter.
British Telecom Cheetah teleprinter

British Telecom 23B Teleprinter

The Model 23B was, in my opinion, a nasty piece of equipment to type on. The keyboard had no tactile resistance, and felt much like the VDU keyboards I have referenced in the 6100 ADX section below.

I found typing on the Teleprinter Number 15 (referenced above) a far more pleasurable experience.

British Telecom 23B teleprinter.
British Telecom 23B teleprinter

23B teleprinter Image: Richard Ash, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Image has been cropped by South Coast View.

British Telecom Puma Teleprinter

The Puma was manufactured by Trend Communications. I saw a lot of these teleprinters on my temping travels but cannot comment as I never got the chance to have a go on one.

I believe this machine was introduced to the market in the early 1980s, and the machines I saw were always coloured grey.

British Telecom Puma teleprinter.
British Telecom Puma teleprinter

Trend 360 Teleprinter

On an aside, the Royal Signals Museum in Blandford Camp, Dorset tells us that the Trend teleprinters were the last teleprinters used by the Royal Signals. Source: Royal Signals Museum. Online PDF file.

I recently visited this museum and viewed a sand-coloured Trend 360 teleprinter on display. Interestingly, the associated description told me that the British Army commissioned some of these Trend teleprinters to be sand-coloured for use during one of the Gulf Wars. The associated image was kindly supplied by the Royal Signals Museum.

Trend 360 teleprinter.
Trend 360 teleprinter

ITT 6100 ADX Message Switching Unit

In the early 1980s I worked as a temp for 3 years in Brown & Root’s Wimbledon office in south west London. This was a busy telex room dealing with the company’s worldwide oil and gas exploration.

The company had an ITT 6100 ADX message switching unit off-site in their Colliers Wood office, also in south west London. The 6100 ADX was linked up to the telex room in Wimbledon and telex messages there were inputted via VDU terminals with separate keyboards.

The 6100 ADX message switching exchange was introduced in 1979. Source: STC Corporate Milestones.

The telex operators in the Wimbledon office had nothing to do with operation of the ADX (short for automatic data exchange) unit. One had to purely learn how route a telex message using a combination of destination shortcodes and wild telex (see the section below for an explanation of these terms), using correct syntax via the VDU unit.

This correct syntax allowed the ADX computer to automatically route a message to a distant telex machine anywhere in the world. If the distant telex machine was engaged, the ADX would store that message and automatically retry dialling the distant machine at pre-determined intervals.

How Message Rejects Were Handled

The ADX 6100 had a system for handling messages that the ADX could not route to their destination. A routing failure could have been caused by several different aspects. Some common reasons were the distant teleprinter being out of order, engaged, or busy telex circuits. These “rejects”, as we used to call them, would display on one of the VDU terminals with a reason for rejection. The operator could then take remedial steps directly from their VDU, to attempt a new transmission of the message.

This method seemed to me like an efficient way of handling rejects. Another system I worked on (Format Communications) displayed rejects on a stand-alone printer. This process involved the operator having to tear off the paper printout containing the reject and reject notifications, moving to a VDU, retrieving the rejected message from the system and then making a new attempt at sending the message. That was a more time-consuming process.

Telex Shortcodes and Wild Telex Addressing

Shortcodes typically consisted of minimum three letters previously inputted into the system. Each shortcode had been programmed to relate to and send a telex message to a specific telex subscriber anywhere in the world. For instance, a shortcode of PAR might denote a single telex machine in Paris, France, while a shortcode of CAR might refer to a single telex machine in Cardiff, UK.

A Wild Telex address (usually inputted on the VDU as WILD, WLDTLX, WTX or WTLX, depending on the system in use), was used as a prefix to a telex number for sending a message when no shortcode had previously been assigned. A combination of Wild Telex and shortcodes could be imputed into the VDU terminal, if the requirement was for a message to be sent to multiple recipients.

In message switching, the term WILD (or one of the variations shown above) is a computing command that indicates to the system that a range of characters consisting of a telex number would follow. The system would understand that this was a command to route the message to the telex number immediately following the command WILD.

These VDUs and keyboards were incredibly frustrating pieces of equipment to work with. All the VDU screens in the telex room I worked in were seriously affected by screen burn-in caused by an idle cursor positioned slap-bang in the middle of the screen. The keyboard had no tactile resistance, usual with many keyboards of the time.

There was no automatic word-wrap, so the operator had to manually insert new lines as required. Bizarrely, there was a dedicated word wrap-key. This feature meant that a proficient touch typist could type away at top speed, disregarding any new lines required, and afterwards, press the word-wrap key. This sequence of events would then automatically word-wrap text, but you still had to manually insert extra new lines to format the text into paragraphs. Using this method, an operator could very slightly increase their typing speed.

Store and Forward Telex in The UK

Many manufacturers were supplying automatic telex routing equipment for the UK market (such as the ADX 6100 mentioned above), and the method of routing these messages by an operator was similar, whichever system you worked with. A generic name for these systems was STOFOR (Store and Forward), although another generic name was MSX (Message Switching Exchange). Other STOFORs I remember operating include CASE by Computer and Systems Engineering and Format Communications.

A Photograph of a Small Telex Office

This lovely associated photograph shows a small telex room at the Farraline Park (Temporary) Police Station, Inverness in 1975.

To the right of the picture, in the foreground and middle ground, are two Teleprinter No. 15 machines, and in the background, a male operator is sitting by a partially obscured Teleprinter No. 7 machine.

Image: Dave Conner via Flickr. 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).

Telex room at the Farraline Park (Temporary) Police Station, Inverness in 1975.
Telex room at the Farraline Park (Temporary) Police Station, Inverness in 1975

The author of the photograph gives very interesting details about this scene, and it’s well worth visiting the above web address for the full story of this telex room.

The Demise of Telex in The UK and the Rise of Faxing and Emailing in the 1990s

The development of high-speed fax machines in the early nineties considerably impacted the availability of work for telex operators. By this time, most of the temping jobs I was assigned to involved operating fax machines. At the same time, private commercial electronic mail networks were increasing at rapid speed, and this further diminished the availability of telex work. It was time to look for a new career…

Closure by British Telecom of Telex in The UK

From 2004, BT no longer offered a telex service to new customers, and telex in the UK was discontinued in 2008. Source: Chenery John. The Telex Service. Lightstraw. Online.

The associated image is of Keybridge House on South Lambeth Road, Vauxhall, London. The building had previously been home to the Post Office’s Telex Operator Centre (TOC).

Keybridge House housed significantly upgraded automatic telex switching exchange equipment. This new facility at Keybridge superseded the older telex switching equipment that had previously been located at the Fleet building in Farringdon, London. Source: Alain Hendrich in the comments section below this post.

Keybridge House previously housed a Post Office telex exchange.
Keybridge House previously housed a Post Office telex exchange

Image: Stephen Richards / Keybridge House, South Lambeth Road (1) via Wikimedia.

Telex in The UK at Connected Earth at Amberley Museum

As mentioned above, most of the teleprinters referenced in this article, are displayed at the Connected Earth exhibition at Amberley Museum in West Sussex. This exhibition has a fascinating feature about telegraphy and telex in the UK.

Telex in the UK at the Connected Earth Exhibition.
Telex in the UK at the Connected Earth Exhibition

As previously mentioned, this article about telex in the UK relies on my memories, some from over 40 years ago. It could be that over the span of many decades I may have got some facts wrong. If you spot any errors in this article, I will be most grateful if you could get in touch.

I would love to hear your memories of telex in the UK. Perhaps you remember me? Leave a comment below.

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20 thoughts on “Telex in The UK and Teleprinters I Remember”

  1. Hi Andrzej, I remember Three Tees Agency and Harry Chambers in Fleet Street very well from the 1970’s. I did an apprenticeship as a trainee telegraphist with Western Union Cables in Gt. Winchester Street and left once completed to work for an insurance company in the City. I also did some part time Telex jobs for Harry to get some extra money while I was at the insurance company. I got the opportunity for a job in ‘The Print’ when I turned 21 with AAP/Reuters and worked on the 5th floor of the Reuters Building for a couple of years. It was all a mixture of straight Telex and Tape. In the Print we would have competitions amongs the keyboard operators to see who could keep the smallest loop of tape while bashing out on the newswire at 60+_wpm. I also had an elder brother who did a similar role for The Sun about the same time. While I was with the insurance company the T15 was on the scene which was aimed at Secretaries but didn’t really catch on in that industry, having a four level keyboard they weren’t popular. I moved onto a major bank after the print job and spent many years as a Telex Operator and Supervisor before being made redundant but just around the corner was the birth of the Internet where it was a good advantage if you could type quickly and accurately. I stayed in the IT sphere until retirement seven years ago. Happy days.

    1. Hi Joe, it’s nice to hear your memories from times bygone. I agree, happy days indeed. Several ex-forces operators told me they did not like the four-level keyboards but had to retrain to keep themselves in work. In the late 1990s I passed a City & Guilds C++ programming course. My fellow students used to call me a code jockey because I could type so fast! It didn’t lead to a career in programming but I believe the logic helped me in designing web sites such as this one. It’s nice to read that like other commenters you have happy memories!

  2. Alain Hendrich

    I recently came across this site. Thank you Andrzej for some lovely memories of telex and photos of equipment! My own association with telex was limited to the mid-1980s when I headed up BT’s telex operator service in Fleet Building, variously known as Intelex or Telex Manual Services. We had over 200 telex operators and about 25 OT (Overseas Telegraph) supervisors connecting calls within the UK and across the globe and as well as providing directory enquiry and general enquiry services and later our own Telex Bureau. The Fleet equipment, installed in 1963, was getting old, unreliable and difficult to fix. In addition to operations, my role was to introduce a new facility called the Telex Operator Centre (TOC) in Keybridge House in Vauxhall. That opened successfully and we improved customer service significantly. The downside in some ways is that we reduced our operator workforce by about 50%. I remember the staff of Fleet and TOC fondly, very professional and service oriented. It was very sad when TOC finally closed along with BT’s automatic telex services. We had not recruited for many years, so many of the operators were “of a certain age”. I always hoped that those who wished or needed to carry on working were able to find alternative roles. For me, it was certainly one of the more interesting and enjoyable periods in my time with BT.

    1. Thanks, Alain. A lot of information from someone “in the know”. Valuable information for ex-operators, most of whom I think would not know this. My understanding now is that Keybridge House housed the automated telex service and took over from the manual service at Fleet. I will now update my post precisely referencing the role of Keybridge House.

  3. I used to work for Three Tees Agency/TRG for about five years in London. I used the Cheetah and Puma telex machine. I always had a job. I also learned out to do swift when I was at a bank as well as telex. I worked in lots of different organisations including sothebys, Mills and Boon ( I met Mr boon). I have fond memories of the friendly staff at Three Tees in Fleet st, I had to go there every week to sort my timesheet. I worked for a few years and then left to travel and work in Australia. coming back was hard as it was difficult to find a telex job. I ended up working in travel. It was a great time. I didn’t have any major office politics as I never stayed long enough and doing telex was a pretty easy and enjoyable no stress job. I do wonder what ever happened to the telex operators when companies stopped using telex machines.

    1. Thank you for the lovely memories, Eva. We had computer experience once VDUs came in so it was fairly easy for us to transition to related jobs. I suspect most operators did well in other careers once telex ended.

    2. I worked for three commodity brokers and then moved to an American oil company that had a VDU based system. Stayed for five years and moved to a Japanese bank, also did SWIFT work but I could see the wrong on the wall. At the time Mercury Communications were heavily recruiting and I secured a role with them but took a gamble as I went for less salary. It paid off and I gained a couple of promotions, doubling my salary within 18 months and moved to a night/day shift roster in their fault centre. Stayed 15 years and took a voluntary redundancy, having grown tired of commuting into London. Worked locally for Openreach for a while (shocking company) and now happily retired.

  4. I remember using the Cheetah Telex in the early 1980s within Merseyside Police. I remeber the paper rolls were multi layered / carbon copies – maybe 4 of 5 layers thick from memory. Green bordered copies to CID, Yellow to Chief Superintendent, red to Divisional Admin. The machine would be in use constantly and there were short codes to send to all stations and departments individually. More often than not lazy operators, usually Constables or CID rookies, would just use the short code to send to ALL machines force wide! I think they must have had interests in the paper roll suppliers. Thanks for the memories.

    1. Many thanks for your memories, Chris. I did a quick Google search for “ply telex paper” and it is still possible to get hold of it. Up to 5 ply!

      1. Amazing that paper is still available. The colours were along the edges. I am confident it was the 5 ply or more we used. Tonnes of the stuff!. Brings back memories

  5. I worked for three tees for some years…including going to remote places I London ad I had a motorbike. Long memories. Just fortunate that I joined an American Bank and ended up as a dealer…it seems that A.I. Will now put all dealers into redundancy.

  6. Was there also an agency called Telesupport or am I imagining it? I trained on a weekly day off from my job at my wife’s stepdads comms room. When I had basically got the hang I registered with, I think, TRG but at the time they had an office in Eastcheap – if it wasn’t them it was another agency. This was in early 1979. Shortly afterwards they got me an interview at a Commodity Brokers in Mincing Lane and thankfully the Comms Manager was happy to take me on with my slow speed. Moved to Supervisor and had a great 3 years before moving to a smaller broker who went under due to breaching oil trade regs with Iran. Then temped at an oil company in Marylebone before being taken on permanently and stayed 5 years on shifts before moving to a Japanese bank back in the City for 2 years until 1989 where I could see the writing on the wall for Telex work. I managed to secure a job with a Telecommunications company as an engineer and progressed gradually over a 15 year spell with them and 4 years elsewhere. Took a voluntary redundancy and saw out my working life with local companies, having had quite enough of commuting.

    1. Hi Dave, I don’t recall an agency called Telesupport. TRG’s first offices were in King William Street corner with Eastcheap. At some stage, they moved a little further east to Lovat Lane, which runs south of Eastcheap. During later stages of their existence they also had an office in St Paul’s Churchyard.

      1. It was probably Lovat Lane then. I think they put me up for most, if not all, of my Telex jobs, but the first Commodity Brokers and the oil company were two of the greatest places I’ve worked. They were great workplaces and great socially.

  7. Hallo Andrzej. Saw your article on teleprinters and thought I’d say thank you for bringing back some good memories. I was a temp myself, trained by Harry Chambers at Chambers Communications but also had two permanent jobs in companies that no longer seem to exist ! I managed to get into naughty old Fleet Street by the back door and worked for two news agencies and two newspapers before being made redundant in the middle 1990s. After that I did some temp work (mainly docfax) through Three Tees. I then did some Christmas casual work for Royal Mail and was offered full-time work with them. That was 1997 and I’m still with them. Thanks again for the article — it was nice strolling down memory lane.

    1. Chambers Communications was well known in chats with operators, although I didn’t work for them. I think all these telex emplyment agencies didn’t smell the coffee and diversify in the nineties and had to close down. I’m pleased you enjoyed recalling the memories, John.

  8. Thank you for this article, Andrzej. I too worked as a temp Telex operator in the early 1970s, including through the Three T’s and TRG agencies. Lovely to revisit those memories by reading your article.

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