Post Office Research Station

Post Office Research Station

The former Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, London
Nickname	Dollis Hill
Named after	General Post Office
Successor	BT Research
Formation	1909
Founder	General Post Office
Dissolved	1975
Purpose	Research
Headquarters	Dollis Hill
Location	London , United Kingdom Martlesham Heath
Coordinates	51°33′42″N0°14′18″W / 51.561629°N 0.238401°W / 51.561629; -0.238401
Region served	United Kingdom
Services	Engineering
Director	Gordon Radley
Parent organization	General Post Office

The Post Office Research Station was first established as a separate section of the General Post Office in 1909. ^[1]

In 1921, the Research Station moved to Dollis Hill, north west London, initially in ex-army huts. ^[1]

The main permanent buildings at Dollis Hill were opened in 1933 by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. ^{[1] [2]}

In 1968, it was announced that the station would be relocated to a new centre to be built at Martlesham Heath in Suffolk. ^[3] This was formally opened on 21 November 1975 by Queen Elizabeth and is today known as Adastral Park.

The old Dollis Hill site was released for housing, with the main building converted into a block of luxury flats and an access road named Flowers Close, in honour of Tommy Flowers. ^[4] Much of the rest of the site contains affordable housing administered by Network Housing.

World War II

Blue plaque for Tommy Flowers at the former Post Office Research Station

In 1943, the world's first programmable electronic computer, Colossus Mark 1, was built by Tommy Flowers and his team, followed in 1944 and 1945 by nine Colossus Mark 2s. These were used at Bletchley Park in Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Dollis Hill also built the predecessor of Colossus, the Heath Robinson codebreaking machine. The Director, Gordon Radley, ^[5] was also told of the secret Bletchley Park establishment. ^[6] Radley's wartime diaries were declassified in 2019. ^[7]

Members of Flowers' team included Sydney Broadhurst, William W. Chandler, Harry Fensom; and Allen Coombs (who took over for the Mark II version of Colossus and also designed the later MOSAIC computer with Chandler, based on Alan Turing's design for the Automatic Computing Engine ^[8] ).

Paddock, a World War II concrete two-level underground bunker, was built in secret in 1939 as an alternative Cabinet War Room underneath a corner of the Dollis Hill site. ^[9] Its surface building was demolished at some point, later in the post-war period.

Research

The first transatlantic radio telephone service was provided in the 1940s. ^[10]

In 1957, ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) was built for the government's Premium Bond lottery, by Sidney Broadhurst's team. ^[11]

In 1971, Samuel Fedida conceived Viewdata and the Prestel service was launched in 1979. ^[12]

Later developments

In the late 1960s, the Post Office acquired part of the decommissioned RAF Martlesham Heath airfield in Suffolk. ^[3] In 1975, the Research Station officially moved to Martlesham. At this site, the Research Station became part of the BT Group. It has continued as BT Research based at Martlesham Heath.

Notable staff

• John Bray
• William W. Chandler
• Allen Coombs
• Dick Dyott
• James H. Ellis
• Samuel Fedida
• Harry Fensom
• Tommy Flowers
• Gil Hayward
• Ralph Archibald Jones. Developed espionage and counter equipment, helped invent the listening devices used for locating buried bomb victims in London, and helped devise the standard for telephone systems in Europe.
• Arnold Lynch
• Frank Morrell
• Gordon Radley
• Stephanie Shirley
• Haakon Sørbye
• Eric Speight
• Henry John Josephs (H. J. Josephs). Entered the Research Station as a draughtsman but eventually rose to a senior research position being known for his mathematical skills. He was a great admirer of Oliver Heaviside and his work, of which Josephs wrote a monograph on the Heaviside Operational calculus. Josephs was also involved with the IEE (now Institution of Engineering and Technology) in which he presented a number of papers at the Heaviside Centenary Meeting in 1950 and went on to examine, repair and study papers of Oliver Heaviside found under the floorboards of a house in Paignton, Devon, where Oliver Heaviside had once lived.
• Captain Bertram S. Cohen (1876 or 1877 – 4 January 1943), O.B.E., Director of Post Office Research Station (? – December 1939). Author of "A Handbook of Telecommunication (Telephony and Telegraphy over wires)", published in 1946 after his death.

References

1. "The Post Office Research Station". Nature. 162 (4106): 51–53. 10 July 1948. doi: 10.1038/162051a0 .
2. Excell, Jon (5 October 2017). "October 1933: The Post Office Research Station". The Engineer.
3. "Post Office Engineering Research Station 1909–1975". UK: Science Museum Group . Retrieved 11 January 2026.
4. "Post Office Research Station". Grace's Guide To British Industrial History. UK. 20 August 2019. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
5. "William Gordon Radley". Grace's Guide To British Industrial History. UK. 28 October 2015. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
6. Archer, Anne (7 October 2022). "The Dollis Hill War Diary: Revealing the Post Office's top secret war effort". Museum Crush. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
7. "The Dollis Hill war diary". BT Archives. BT Group. 2019. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
8. Smith, Edward (2025). "MOSAIC – a neglected fragment of UK's computer story". The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology. 95 (1). Taylor & Francis: 59–79. doi:10.1080/17581206.2024.2392859.
9. "Paddock Standby Cabinet War Room". Subterranea Britannica. UK. Retrieved 12 January 2026.
10. "Post Office (Telecommunications Research)". Hansard . UK Parliament. 3 May 1946.
11. Reynolds, Laura (13 October 2017). "This Building Helped End The Second World War". Londonist. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
12. "Celebrating the Viewdata Revolution: In the beginning". viewdata.org.uk. UK. Retrieved 12 January 2026.

External links

• Media related to Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill at Wikimedia Commons