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!
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