Party Vibe

I regularly get sent (or search for) info about telecommunications around the 1960s to the 1970s/1980s; and noticed that a great deal of it (even training and marketing films) has a somewhat psychedelic appearance; with widespread use of bright colours ; and nearly all the older electronics engineers from that time seem to be a mixture of hippy and mad professor.

The PTT was the Post, Telegraph and Telephone organisation; until recently you got your telephone from the Post Office as well as the letters and parcels, and in some countries they controlled the transmitter towers for radio and television. The PTT also carried out the functions of the Communications Ministry (so you kept out of their way if you were running a pirate station) although rather curiously they often provided telephones to the studios of pirates and either didn’t realise or didn’t care what these were being used for!

Many people claim the PTT was slow to deliver the telephones, they were expensive to use and sometimes didn’t work at all; this was more caused by limits of technology and governments taking the money raised from the telephone bills and using it (and the better resources) for Cold War stuff rather than a lack of skill of the workers, they were very intelligent and a lot of resources were put into training and research.

In Northern Europe, research was usually carried out in special laboratories situated in coastal areas just outside a big city; they worked on both fixed line and wireless equipment. New telephone exchanges were installed in small villages/towns nearby; and various masts and satellite dishes put up by the coast for transmitting and receiving signals (often working with other organisations) across the North Sea. This made sense as if the new equipment did not work correctly first time, the end result would not be the whole of London, Amsterdam or Copenhagen without phones or interference on all their TVs and radios, and the boffins could more easily switch back to the old stuff whilst they fixed the bugs.

To work at one of these places you either needed at least one university degree, or were selected from a regional unit of telephone engineers; these units had a better gender balance (girls are as smart as boys with electronics and often much better at soldering and wiring up a circuit without making mistakes), and because they were in the middle of nowhere those who were selected got better working conditions and a “slower” pace of work (although they needed to use their brains more).

A few of them admitted there was a good quantity of acid doing the rounds in their circle of friends – as well as the usual stimulants and depressants, but in those days such drugs were easily diverted from the health service, or the doctor would prescribe them anyway against “tiredness and depression”, the PTT often had its own doctors (and often the drugs were also a way of getting some young workers to accept doing things they did not like such as military or surveillance/interception work, which also happened because of the useful antenna towers and intercept points, PRISM is nothing new….)

But LSD was made illegal in the late 1960s, and these smart people would not risk their careers by getting involved with “drug dealer” types. So how did they get it?

On the coast of England as well as the research centre (still around today), there were at least two factories which made equipment for telephone exchanges, communications radios for the emergency and public services, as well as radio, TV and hi fi equipment. They were at least part owned by Phllips. Similar ones existed in Denmark and of course the Netherlands.

Philips then made a lot of glass glow lamps (some to light up things, some were signal lamps, there was even a noise lamp (it makes noise at radio frequencies). They also made valves, which are a special kind of lamp that when it heats up can be used to make some electric signals stronger, and was then the best way of getting high power audio or radio signals to a loudspeaker or transmitting antenna. There were also other items such as quartz crystals and speciall coils of wire – all of which were fragile and had to be carefully packed.

PTT research centres would regularly purchase these but in smaller quantities than a big factory would use, often different/specialist kinds) and they would be delivered directly to the laboratory (a factory would open up the parcel and count the contents to stop the staff nicking some of the stock).

The Post office was part of the same organisation, and the Customs/Douane authorities got their telephones and communications radios from the PTT.

So the boffins warned all of them that any parcel marked “PHILIPS HOLLAND, FRAGILE” or one marked FRAGILE and sent between PTT research centres across Europe was to be treated carefully, not to be thrown around the sorting office and definitely not opened up by Customs/Douane, nor prodded with sharp items, or exposed to x-rays or strong radiation to see what was inside, as that would knacker the contents, and the uniformed services accepted this as the equipment they had been promised would be further delayed.

Lamps and valves were always packed in corrugated cardboard surrounded by other layers of packing material; and other items can be inserted into these layers :wink:. Not every parcel would contain extra goodies – it was still illegal and anyone caught would go from a well paid job to a prison cell, there were still some checks by management and by the 1970s they had lost a few good engineers who ended up as acid casualties, but drug use in those eras amongst smarter people wasn’t as regular as today anyway and it was small quantities used amongst a group of friends who often had “odd” hobbies anyway which involved wandering around the countryside….

I think they got away with it here until BT got privatised, it would explain some of the wiring schemes I’ve encountered in earlier buildings… :laugh_at: