One pair of machines in H12 had a key that worryingly seemed
to switch the machine into record! In fact what it did was to apply a very
low level erase voltage which was supposed to reduce print through. Whether
this worked or not I don't know but I remember a trainee operating the key
saying "What's this do?" and looking aghast as the red record lamp
lit. However it made no audible difference to the output much to his (and
my) relief! -
Barry Taylor
There were two very large toilets on the LG and Basement, one gents and one
ladies. On an old pre-war fire plan I once saw these were labelled "Junior
Male and Junior Female Staff Toilets". This implies that if you were
a junior oik you had to go all the way down to the bottom of the building
for a pee! I suppose the small toilets on each floor were executives only!
-
Barry Taylor
Jargon
DX689 was a line between Broadcasting House in
London and Daventry, DX being the BBC's abbreviation for the latter. At
this time the Post Office controlled telecommunications infrastructure
and would have known this line as PW12689, PW meaning 'Private Wire'.
One of the little facts that I remember was that because DX689 was a DC line,
lines department had a bridge measuring set on it to measure the round trip
resistance. Because the line is buried at a uniform (more or less) distance
underground it could be equated to ground temperature and as the temperature
changed during the year it affected the frequency response of all lines. Accordingly,
at set temperature points, a service message was sent out instructing control
rooms to change the jumpers on the TCU (temperature compensation units) blocks
on the back of all BBC built line equalizers. -
Robin Sinton
