037 Chartwell court Brook road London (7139300585)

The Post Office Research Station was first established as a separate section of the General Post Office in 1909. In 1921, the Research Station moved to

Dollis Hill Dollis Hill is an area in northwest London, which consists of the streets surrounding the 35 hectares (86 acres) Gladstone Park. It is served by a London Underground station, Dollis Hill, on the Jubilee line, providing good links to central Lo ...

, north west

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, initially in ex-army huts. The main permanent buildings at Dollis Hill were opened in 1933 by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. In 1968 it was announced that the station would be relocated to a new centre to be built at

Martlesham Heath Martlesham Heath village is situated 6 miles (10 km) east of Ipswich, in Suffolk, England. This was an ancient area of heathland and latterly the site of Martlesham Heath Airfield. A "new village" was established there in the mid-1970s and t ...

in Suffolk. This was formally opened on 21 November 1975 by Queen Elizabeth and is today known as

Adastral Park Adastral Park is a science campus based on part of the old Royal Air Force Station at Martlesham Heath, near Ipswich in the English county of Suffolk. When the site opened it was known as the Post Office Research Station, but it was subsequen ...

. The old Dollis Hill site was released for housing, with the main building converted into a block of luxury flats and an access road named Flowers Close, in honour of

Tommy Flowers Thomas Harold Flowers MBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was an English engineer with the British General Post Office. During World War II, Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help ...

. Much of the rest of the site contains affordable housing administered by Network Housing.

Paddock A paddock is a small enclosure for horses. In the United Kingdom, this term also applies to a field for a general automobile racing competition, particularly Formula 1. Description In Canada and the United States of America, a paddock is a small ...

, a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

concrete two-level underground bunker, was built in secret in 1939 as an alternative Cabinet War Room underneath a corner of the Dollis Hill site. Its surface building was demolished after the war.

Research

The first transatlantic radio telephone service. In 1943 the world's first programmable electronic computer,

Colossus Colossus, Colossos, or the plural Colossi or Colossuses, may refer to: Statues * Any exceptionally large statue ** List of tallest statues ** :Colossal statues * ''Colossus of Barletta'', a bronze statue of an unidentified Roman emperor * ''Col ...

Mark 1, was built by

and his team, followed in 1944 and 1945 by nine Colossus Mark 2s. These were used at

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher was the process that enabled the British to read high-level German army messages during World War II. The British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park decrypted many communications betwee ...

. In 1957

ERNIE Ernie is a masculine given name, frequently a short form (hypocorism) of Ernest, Ernald, Ernesto, or Verner. It may refer to: People * Ernie Accorsi (born 1941), American football executive * Ernie Adams (disambiguation) * Ernie Afaganis (born c ...

(Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) was built for the government's Premium Bond lottery, by Sidney Broadhurst's team. In 1971

Samuel Fedida Samuel Fedida, OBE (4 May 1918 – 2007) was an Egyptian-born British telecommunication engineer responsible at Post Office Telecommunications for the development of Viewdata. Fedida was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He had the idea for Viewdata ...

conceived

Viewdata Viewdata is a Videotex implementation. It is a type of information retrieval service in which a subscriber can access a remote database via a common carrier channel, request data and receive requested data on a video display over a separate c ...

and the

Prestel Prestel (abbrev. from press telephone), the brand name for the UK Post Office Telecommunications's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979. It achieved a maxim ...

service was launched in 1979.

Notable staff

* John Bray * William W. Chandler * Allen Coombs * Dick Dyott * James H. Ellis *

* Harry Fensom *

* Gil Hayward * Ralph Archibald Jones. Developed espionage and counter equipment, helped invent the listening devices used for locating buried bomb victims in London and helped devise the standard for telephone systems in Europe. * Arnold Lynch * Frank Morrell * Gordon Radley *

Stephanie Shirley Dame Vera Stephanie "Steve" Shirley (previously Brook, née Buchthal; born 16 September 1933) is an information technology pioneer, businesswoman and philanthropist (naturalised British in 1951). Early life Shirley was born as Vera Buch ...

* Haakon Sørbye * Eric Speight * Henry John Josephs (H. J. Josephs). Entered the Research Station as a draughtsman but eventually rose to a senior research position being known for his mathematical skills. He was a great admirer of

Oliver Heaviside Oliver Heaviside FRS (; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English self-taught mathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed vec ...

and his work, of which Josephs wrote a monograph on the Heaviside

Operational calculus Operational calculus, also known as operational analysis, is a technique by which problems in analysis, in particular differential equations, are transformed into algebraic problems, usually the problem of solving a polynomial equation. History Th ...

. Josephs was also involved with the IEE (now

Institution of Engineering and Technology The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is a multidisciplinary professional engineering institution. The IET was formed in 2006 from two separate institutions: the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), dating back to 1871, and ...

) in which he presented a number of papers at the Heaviside Centenary Meeting in 1950 and went on to examine, repair and study papers of Oliver Heaviside found under the floorboards of a house in Paignton, Devon, where Oliver Heaviside had once lived.

References

{{Coord, 51.561629, -0.238401, display=title, format=dms Former buildings and structures in the London Borough of Brent General Post Office History of computing History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom 20th century in London 1921 establishments in the United Kingdom 1921 in London