Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

Whist doing some random browsing on the internet today, I came across a tape with a curious label. From what I can tell, it appears that the manufacture of the tape was specifically contracted by GCHQ?

Is anyone familiar with this sort of thing? I've attached a picture of the label that sparked my curiosity.

Re: Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

I imagine GCHQ bought huge amounts of tape at one time. I didn't know Ilford was a manufacturer though - maybe they bought it in from somebody else. It's possible Ilford supplied all their photo stuff and they preferred to buy everything from a single supplier, especially if security vetting was involved.

Re: Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

Ilford did actually make tape, and pretty good it was, too - the tape business became part of Racal and, amongst other products, supplied 675 to the BBC - one of the finest analogue tapes ever made.

Re: Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

Ilford Zonal rings a bell.

Re: Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

I still have 2 Racal Zonal ferric cassettes. good quality as well for a budget tape

Re: Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

If it was actually used tape, it could contain 3600 ft of state secrets

Re: Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

Historically there have been various central purchasing operations who did procurement for Government agencies; they would issue the spec, arrange the manufacture, and handle the flow of your tax-money to pay for it all. In the 1970s it was "The Crown Suppliers", before that it was a division of the Property Services Agency (PSA) - who also supplied lots of stuff to the Post Office which was then still a Crown body. Prior to that we had the Ministry of Works and the Ministry of Supply doing it.

I guess whichever of these was active at the time would have contracts for quite a bit of tape: not just for GCHQ but for the likes of the emergency services (recording 999 calls) and airports (recording ground-to-air comms). I remember ordering 80-column computer punch-cards via Property Services Agency contract!

Re: Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

A lot of Ilford tape was made for them by Pyral of France - especially the Zonal brand - and yes it was very good tape as Pyral held the sole mainland Europe Scotch/3M licence. Zonal long held Pyral's UK license but Zonal was put up for sale in 1963 when their founders retired... at which Ilford bought them

Zonal's main business was sound-track film stock. Racal acquired the Ilford-Zonal audio business in 1971. (The Ilford photographic operations went into administration in 2004 .. but survives through an MBO.) Simples!

Barry

Re: Ilford Tape & GCHQ
 

Some time ago I bought a mixed box of 3" EMI tapes. Half of them had details about improving the boundary security at RAF Marham.

A few even had internal messages from the station Commander to the Swedish manufacturer of Bofors guns and details of commissioning them around the perimeter of the airbase.

From information on the tapes, it seemed to be around 1960.