BEHIND THE SCENES WITH TELECOMMUNICATIONS AT MOTAT

Members of the MOTAT Society were welcomed by MOTAT's Telecommunications volunteers for a behind-the-scenes tour of their workshops and galleries. Many of us spend most of our volunteering time with a particular collection or team, so this was a welcome opportunity to discover more about another part of MOTAT and the people who care for it.

The tour began in the Telecommunications workshops in Building 4, where equipment, components and spare parts are carefully organised and stored. The team faces a particular challenge: many of the parts needed to maintain historic telecommunications equipment are no longer manufactured. Keeping a range of components and donor equipment available for repairs is therefore essential to keeping objects operational — even if the team might modestly disagree about just how perfectly organised their workshops are!

The team introduced us to the earlier days of telecommunications, when telegrams, telephone services and postal services were all handled by the Post Office. Demonstrations of telephone exchange equipment, and teleprinter machinery brought this history to life, showing how messages travelled long before the internet became part of everyday life.

One highlight was the ComputerPhone, an integrated computer terminal and telephone introduced in New Zealand and Australia in 1985 by Telecom New Zealand. Based on Britain's One Per Desk system, it combined personal computing and telecommunications in a single desktop device. The Telecommunications team has been working hard to get MOTAT's example operational again, helping to bring an innovative piece of computing history back to life.

The tour continued in the Get Smart galleries in Building 1, above the library, where the collection demonstrates the development of computing and communications technology. Among the highlights was the Cambridge Meccano Differential Analyser, built in 1935 and recorded in MOTAT's collection by its accession number 2008.18. Constructed from Meccano, this mechanical analogue computer uses interconnected wheel-and-disc integrators to solve differential equations. Only a small number of comparable machines are thought to survive worldwide.

The team demonstrated the differential analyser, which had apparently behaved perfectly during testing but proved less cooperative in front of an audience! Its reluctance to perform was a useful reminder that keeping historic technology working can be as much an art as a science.

The visit concluded with a discussion and demonstrations of how telephone exchanges connected calls in the days before the internet, when communications relied on copper wires and physical switching systems. We are grateful to the Telecommunications volunteers for sharing their knowledge, opening up their working spaces and giving Society members a fascinating glimpse into a collection many of us rarely get to explore.

Article and Photos courtesy Scott Pilkington

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