Post Office Research Station

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The Post Office Research Station ( German  "Postal Research Center" ) was from 1923 to 1976 the research center of the General Post Office (then the postal authority) of the United Kingdom , based in Dollis Hill , a district in the London borough of Brent .

history

The building of the former Post Office Research Station in the Dollis Hill borough of London (photo from 2010)
One of the most famous employees of the Post Office Research Station was Tommy Flowers (1905-1998)
The current headquarters of the former Post Office Research Station under the logo of British Telecommunications in the county of Suffolk (photo from 2016)

After it had been recognized as early as 1914 that the British postal service needed improved research facilities, suitable premises for a permanent research center were sought. Five years later, the site on Dollis Hill was acquired and wooden barracks were initially built until the stone main building was completed in 1923.

The 1930s were marked by rapid advances in the field of telecommunications , to which Dollis Hill researchers and development engineers , such as Tommy Flowers , made a significant contribution. Examples are the transatlantic deep-sea cables laid at the time and early television test programs by the BBC .

During the Second World War , cryptanalysts from Bletchley Park (BP) also worked there and developed cryptanalytic methods and devices to break the Lorenz key machine used by the German Wehrmacht in World War II to encrypt their highly secret strategic radio telex connections (own name: key addition 40; in short: SZ 40; English code name Tunny ; German " Tunfisch " ).  

The work during the war culminated in the development of the world's first programmable tube computer , called Colossus , carried out by Tommy Flowers , which was successfully used against the German key addition from February 1944 .

After the war, in the 1960s, the space on Dollis Hill became too small for the steadily growing workforce. After the General Post Office was closed, the research center moved to its new headquarters in Martlesham Heath , near Ipswich in the county of Suffolk . At first it continued to operate there under its old name, before it was first renamed BT Research Laboratories ( German  “Forschungslaboratorien der British Telecommunications ” ) and finally Adastral Park . The former premises of the research center on Dollis Hill were converted into 62 apartments in the 1990s , called Chartwell Court , and are located on a street now named after Tommy Flowers, Flowers Close .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dollis Hill GPO Research Station (English). Retrieved January 9, 2017.
  2. ^ Gordon Welchman: The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, p. 11. ISBN 0-947712-34-8
  3. ↑ Donald Michie : Colossus and the Breaking of the Wartime "Fish" Codes. Cryptologia , 26: 1, pp. 17-58, 2002. doi: 10.1080 / 0161-110291890740 . DOC; 220 kB .

Coordinates: 51 ° 33 ′ 42 "  N , 0 ° 14 ′ 18"  W.