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paulsherwin · 30th May 2020, 10:28 am

There was some confusion over the status of the Post Office Tower, but the 'Chiltern' towers were generally not shown on maps.

Although the microwave network carried largely civilian traffic all its working life, and was operated by BT, it was conceived and built as a military system. The MOD wanted to get detailed air defence radar plots back to Whitehall and the big command bunker in High Wycombe in real time, and a microwave network was the only way to do this with the technology of the late 50s. It was difficult even with the network - there was lots of custom networking hardware attached to PDP-8 and PDP-11 computers. I was briefly involved in a project to modernise and replace this hardware around 1990, though I had no high level classified clearance. (My report concluded that the proposed solution couldn't cope with the data. I don't know what they finished up building. Maybe the PDPs are still there.)

There was much less separation of the military, government and civilian telecoms sectors in the 60s and 70s than is normal today. Remember, the Postmaster General was a senior cabinet minister.

30th May 2020, 10:28 am	#27
paulsherwin Moderator Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Oxford, UK Posts: 27,949	Re: BT 'Chiltern' telecom towers There was some confusion over the status of the Post Office Tower, but the 'Chiltern' towers were generally not shown on maps. Although the microwave network carried largely civilian traffic all its working life, and was operated by BT, it was conceived and built as a military system. The MOD wanted to get detailed air defence radar plots back to Whitehall and the big command bunker in High Wycombe in real time, and a microwave network was the only way to do this with the technology of the late 50s. It was difficult even with the network - there was lots of custom networking hardware attached to PDP-8 and PDP-11 computers. I was briefly involved in a project to modernise and replace this hardware around 1990, though I had no high level classified clearance. (My report concluded that the proposed solution couldn't cope with the data. I don't know what they finished up building. Maybe the PDPs are still there.) There was much less separation of the military, government and civilian telecoms sectors in the 60s and 70s than is normal today. Remember, the Postmaster General was a senior cabinet minister.