For the specific history of the British postal system, see Royal Mail. The General Post Office (GPO) was officially established in England in 1660 by Charles II and it eventually grew to combine the functions of both the state postal system and telecommunications carrier. In 1969 it was abolished and the assets transferred to the newly-created Post Office Corporation, changing it from a Department of State to a Statutory Corporation which was in turn split into separate Post Office and British Telecommunications Corporations in 1981. For the more recent history of the postal system in the United Kingdom, see the article: Royal Mail. Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. ...
Image File history File links GPO_badge. ...
Image File history File links GPO_badge. ...
Motto (French) God and my right Anthem No official anthem - the United Kingdom anthem God Save the Queen is commonly used England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto)1 Unified - by Athelstan 927 AD Area - Total...
Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. ...
It has been suggested that first class mail be merged into this article or section. ...
Telecommunication involves the transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose of communication. ...
A Statutory Corporation is a corporation created by statute. ...
BT Group plc (which trades as just BT, and is commonly known as, British Telecom or British Telecommunications) is the privatised former British state telecommunications operator. ...
Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. ...
The 19th century headquarters of the General Post Office in St Martins-le-Grand in the City of London. Originally, the GPO was a monopoly covering the despatch of items from a specific sender to a specific receiver, which was to be of great importance when new forms of communication were invented. The postal service was known as the Royal Mail because it was built on the distribution system for royal and government documents. In 1661 the office of Postmaster General was created to oversee the GPO. Image File history File links The_Post_Office_in_St_Martin_le_Grand_by_Thomas_Shepherd_(late_1820s). ...
Image File history File links The_Post_Office_in_St_Martin_le_Grand_by_Thomas_Shepherd_(late_1820s). ...
A monopoly (from the Greek language monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a product or service, in other words a firm that has no competitors in its industry. ...
Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. ...
1661 (MDCLXI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). ...
In the United Kingdom, the Postmaster General is a now defunct ministerial position. ...
Early postal services
Clerks at work at the post office in London circa 1808. The GPO created a network of post offices where senders could submit items. All post was transferred from the post office of origination to distribution points called sorting stations, and from there the post was then sent on for delivery to the receiver of the post. Initially it was the recipient of the post who paid the fee, and he had the right to refuse to accept the item if he did not wish to pay. The charge was based on the distance the item had been carried so the GPO had to keep a separate account for each item. In 1840 the Penny Post was introduced, which incorporated the two key innovations of a uniform postal rate, which cut administrative costs and encouraged use of the system, and adhesive pre-paid stamps. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (846x612, 122 KB) Summary The Post Office as drawn by Augustus Pugin Senior and Thomas Rowlandson for Ackermanns Microcosm of London (1808-11). ...
Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (846x612, 122 KB) Summary The Post Office as drawn by Augustus Pugin Senior and Thomas Rowlandson for Ackermanns Microcosm of London (1808-11). ...
The Penny Post is any one of several postal systems in which normal letters could be sent for one penny. ...
Headquarters
The Inland Letter Office at the General Post Office in 1845. In the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, the GPO was based in a succession of locations in the City of London. A new GPO headquarters was built on the eastern side of St Martins-le-Grand in the City of London between 1825 and 1829 to designs by Sir Robert Smirke. It was in the Grecian style with ionic porticoes, and was 400 feet long and 80 feet deep. In the 1870s a new building was added on the western side of the street to house the Telegraph department, and the General Post Office North was constructed immediately to the north of the Telegraph building in the 1890s as the GPO continued to expand. Smirke's building was closed in 1910 and demolished soon afterwards and the current headquarters of BT, a post World War II building, is on the site of the old Telegraph Office. Image File history File linksMetadata GPO_Inland_letter_office_ILN_1845. ...
Image File history File linksMetadata GPO_Inland_letter_office_ILN_1845. ...
Motto: Domine dirige nos Latin: Lord, guide us Shown within Greater London Sovereign state United Kingdom Constituent country England Region Greater London Status sui generis, City and Ceremonial County Admin HQ Guildhall Government - Leadership see text - Mayor John Stuttard - MP Mark Field - London Assembly John Biggs Area - City 1. ...
Sir Robert Smirke (1781-18 April 1867) was a leading 19th century British architect. ...
Architects first real look at the Greek Ionic order: Julien David LeRoy, Les ruines plus beaux des monuments de la Grèce Paris, 1758 (Plate XX) The Ionic order forms one of the three orders or organizational systems of classical architecture, the other two canonic orders being the Doric and...
Categories: Architectural elements | Stub ...
Optical Telegraf of Claude Chappe on the Litermont near Nalbach, Germany Telegraphy (from the Greek words tele (τηλε) = far and graphein (γÏαφειν) = write) is the long-distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters, originally by changing something that could be observed from a distance (optical telegraphy). ...
BT Group plc (formerly known as British Telecommunications) which trades as BT (and previously as British Telecom) is the privatised former British state telecommunications operator. ...
Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...
In the mid 19th century there were four branch offices in London: one in the City at Lombard Street; two in the West End at Charing Cross and Cavendish Street near Oxford Street; and one south of the Thames in Borough High Street. [1] The interior of Covent Garden Market in the West End The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the citys major tourist attractions, businesses, and administrative headquarters. ...
The Victorian Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross The name Charing Cross, now given to a district of central London in the City of Westminster, comes from the original hamlet of Charing, where King Edward I placed a memorial to his wife, Eleanor of Castile. ...
Oxford Street, with Centre Point in the background Oxford Street in 1875, looking west from the junction with Duke Street. ...
Several places exist with the name Thames, and the word is also used as part of several brand and company names Most famous is the River Thames in England, on which the city of London stands Other Thames Rivers There is a Thames River in Canada There is a Thames...
Borough High Street with Tower 42 in the background Borough tube station Blue Men by Ofra Zimbalista climbing Maya House on Borough High Street (March 2007) Borough High Street is the last section of the road from Dover to London as it approaches London Bridge. ...
New communication systems When new forms of communication came into existence in the 19th and early 20th centuries the GPO claimed monopoly rights on the basis that like the postal service they involved delivery from a sender and to a receiver. The theory was used to expand state control of the mail service into every form of electronic communication possible on the basis that every sender used some form of distribution service. These distribution services were considered in law as forms of electronic post offices. This applied to telegraph and telephone switching stations.
In the mid 19th century several private telegraph companies were established in the UK. The Telegraph Act of 1868 granted the Postmaster General the right to acquire inland telegraph companies in the United Kingdom and the Telegraph Act of 1869 conferred on the Postmaster-General a monopoly in telegraphic communication in the UK. Overseas telegraphs did not fall within the monopoly. The private telegraph companies were bought out. The new combined telegraph service had 1,058 telegraph offices in towns and cities and 1,874 offices at railway stations. 6,830,812 telegrams were transmitted in 1869 producing revenue of £550,000. The effective nationalisation of the UK telecommunications industry occurred in 1912 with the takeover of the National Telephone Company which left only a few municipal undertakings independent of the GPO (in particular Hull Telephones Department, and the States of Jersey). Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Passengers bustle around the typical grand edifice of Londons Broad Street Station in 1865. ...
Company logo in porch of 17 & 19 Newhall Street, Birmingham (former Central exchange) The National Telephone Company (NTC) was a British telephone company from 1881 until 1911 which brought together smaller local companies in the early years of the telephone. ...
Kingston Communications PLC is a telecommunications provider based in Kingston upon Hull serving primarily the East Yorkshire area. ...
Jersey Telecom logo. ...
The same principles were applied to telephone, wireless telegraph and wireless telephone services. This latter expansion then incorporated wireless broadcasting which was non-specific in terms of delivery from sender to receiver. At first the GPO referred to all broadcasting transmitters as senders, while individual receivers retained that name. Like the mail, everything was licensed by the General Post Office under the terms of its Royal Charter. A Royal Charter is a charter given by a monarch to legitimize an incorporated body, such as a city, company, university or such. ...
Control of broadcasting This theory ran into trouble when wireless telephone broadcasting was invented, because the senders were not addressing any specific recipient. However, this theory was accepted and made into law and it resulted in an extension of GPO monopoly over all forms of electronic communication. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
In 1922 all electrical manufacturers were forced by the GPO to create a single licensed British Broadcasting Company (BBC). In 1927, the original BBC was dissolved when a Royal Charter was given to a new GPO licensed British Broadcasting Corporation. The British Broadcasting Company Ltd was a British commercial company formed on October 18, 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom. ...
A Royal Charter is a charter given by a monarch to legitimize an incorporated body, such as a city, company, university or such. ...
This article is an overview article about the Crown chartered British Broadcasting Corporation formed in 1927. ...
From the start the GPO had trouble with competitive pirate radio broadcasters who found ways to deliver electronic messages to British receivers without first obtaining a GPO licence. These competitors were well aware of the fact that the GPO would never grant them such a licence. To police these unlicensed stations the GPO evolved its own force of detectives and "detector vans". The term pirate radio usually refers to illegal or unregulated radio broadcasting. ...
The radio regulation functions were transferred to the Independent Broadcasting Authority and later Ofcom. The Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) was the regulatory body in the United Kingdom for commercial television (ITV and Channel 4 - cable and satellite television were the responsibility of the Cable Authority) and radio broadcasts. ...
Ofcom is a regulator for communication industries in the United Kingdom. ...
Due to its regulatory role, as well as its expertise in developing long-distance communication networks, the GPO was contracted by the BBC, and the ITA in the 1950s and 60s to develop, and extend their television networks. A network of transmitters was built, connected at first by cable, and later by microwave radio links. The Post Office also took responsibility for the issuing of television licence fees (and radio, until 1971), and the prosecution of evaders until 1991. The British Broadcasting Corporation, which is usually known as the BBC, is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GB£4 billion. ...
ITA can refer to: The International Olympic Committees abbreviation for Italy In the United Kingdom, the Independent Television Authority was the regulator for commercial television for some years. ...
This does not cite any references or sources. ...
Centuries: 1st century BC - 1st century - 2nd century Decades: 10s - 20s - 30s - 40s - 50s - 60s - 70s - 80s - 90s - 100s - 110s 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 Note: Sometimes the 60s is used as shorthand for the 1960s, the 1860s, or other such decades in various centuries...
Sites of transmitting stations for UK television and radio broadcasting. ...
A television licence (or more correctly broadcast receiver licence, as it usually also pays for public radio) is an official licence required in many countries for all owners of television (and sometimes also radio) receivers. ...
Growth in telecommunications - See also: TXK and TXE
After the Second World War, there began to be an unprecedented demand for telephone services. In addition, there was the need to make comprehensive repairs, and upgrades to a network which had been severely degraded by war, and lack of investment. Waiting lists for new telephone lines quickly emerged, and persisted for several decades. To alleviate the situation, the Post Office began to allow lines (and costs) to be shared between subscribers, known as a party line, however this was far from satisfactory. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
TXK (Telephone eXchange Crossbar) was a range of Crossbar exchanges used by the British Post Office telephone network, subsequently BT, between 1964 and 1994. ...
TXE, which stands for Telephone eXchange Electronic, were a number of exchanges developed by the General Post Office (GPO), now BT, designed to replace the aging Strowger systems. ...
Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...
In older telephone systems, a party line (also multiparty line or Shared Service Line) is an arrangement in which two or more customers are connected directly to the same local loop. ...
At this time, the majority of lines in rural, and regional areas (particularly in Scotland and Wales) were still manually switched. This inhibited growth, and caused bottlenecks in the network, as well as being labour and cost-intensive. The Post Office began to introduce automatic switching, and replaced all of its 6000 exchanges. Subscriber Trunk Dialling was also added from 1958, which allowed subscribers to dial their own long-distance calls. Subscriber trunk dialling (STD) (also known as subscriber toll dialling) is a term for the UK telephone system allowing subscribers to dial trunk calls without operator assistance. ...
Year 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Banking Services In the mid-1960s the GPO was asked by the government to expand into banking services which resulted in the creation of the National Giro. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
Girobank (originally founded as the National Giro) was a British financial institution which began operations in 1968. ...
Reorganisation, and dissolution In 1969 the assets of the Post Office were transferred from a government department with a Royal Charter to a Statutory Corporation. Responsibility for telecommunications was given to Post Office Telecommunications, the successor of the GPO Telephones division, with its own separate budget and management. A Statutory Corporation is a corporation created by statute. ...
Post Office Telecommunications was set up as a separate department of the UK Post Office, in October 1969. ...
In 1981, the British Telecommunications Act split off the telecommunications business to form the British Telecommunications Corporation, leaving the Post Office Corporation with the mail, parcels, Girobank, and Post Office businesses; British Telecommunications was converted to British Telecommunications plc in 1984, and was privatised. The businesses of the Post Office Corporation were later transferred to the Royal Mail Holdings plc, created in 2001. The Government is the sole shareholder in Royal Mail Group Ltd (formerly plc) and Post Office Ltd. BT Group plc (which trades as just BT, and is commonly known as, British Telecom or British Telecommunications) is the privatised former British state telecommunications operator. ...
...
Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. ...
Finally, on April 5, 2007, the Government published the Dissolution of the Post Office Order, 2007, under which the Post Office was formally abolished with effect from May 1, 2007. is the 95th day of the year (96th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
is the 121st day of the year (122nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
On April 18, 2007, the Post Office announced to staff that nationwide 76 branches are to make the move to a British retailer W H Smith by autumn 2008. The Post Office says all its services will continue to be available at W H Smith. is the 108th day of the year (109th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...
2008 (MMVIII) will be a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
See also This is a list of topics related to the United Kingdom. ...
It has been suggested that first class mail be merged into this article or section. ...
A Victorian hexagonal red post box. ...
The Post Office in Oxford. ...
Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. ...
This article is an overview article about the Crown chartered British Broadcasting Corporation formed in 1927. ...
In the United Kingdom and the Crown dependencies, a television licence is required to receive any publically broadcast television service, from any source. ...
The GPO Film Unit was a subdivision of the UK General Post Office. ...
Post Office Telecommunications was set up as a separate department of the UK Post Office, in October 1969. ...
BT Group plc (which trades as just BT, and is commonly known by its former name, British Telecom) is the privatised former British state telecommunications operator. ...
The Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, London, was first established in 1921 and opened by the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1933. ...
K2 red telephone boxes behind Enzo Plazzottas bronze, Young Dancer, on Broad Street, Covent Garden, London A K6 red telephone box in Oxford The red telephone box, a public telephone kiosk designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was a once familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom. ...
Girobank (originally founded as the National Giro) was a British financial institution which began operations in 1968. ...
External links |
Feeds |
Contact