ekco-electronics.co.uk
Ekco Electronics
Pyetmc
TMC in Malmesbury
By Ian Cox
Background
Pye TMC was created when Pye of Cambridge bought The Telephone Manufacturing Company Ltd (TMC). TMC had a long and successful history in the telecommunications industry in the UK, being a niche player with some innovative products, mostly related to Strowger electromechanical (relay) technology and telephones. Pye of Cambridge was also in telecommunications, principally through its Pye Telecom radio communications business. Philips, the Dutch group, purchased Pye of Cambridge in the 1960s, thus acquiring Pye TMC in that transaction. (Many in Pye TMC thought Philips didn’t realise at the time, but came to their senses later). So Philips TMC came into being. To avoid confusion the company will be called simply TMC from now on.
Malmesbury-Here we Come
TMC moved its headquarters to Malmesbury in the early 1970s from Dulwich in London. The Dulwich manufacturing activity, mainly producing Strowger electromechanical equipment for the General Post Office (GPO), later to become British Telecommunications (BT) was closed. The company retained two centres for manufacturing, one in Glasgow (Airdrie) which manufactured telephones and, later, telephone switching equipment, and one in Livingston, near Edinburgh. The Livingston site manufactured transmission equipment, which was phased out over several years, and the site sold off. The Airdrie factory, along with Bellshill, became the main centre for manufacturing the product designs from TMC in Malmesbury, which grew rapidly in the 1970s.
Early Product Design
Initially, when TMC came to Malmesbury, it transferred its engineering design group from Dulwich in London, then called The Advanced Development Division. This, under its enigmatic chief engineer J.G.L Rhodes (OBE), specialised in what was then known as Large Scale Integration using four-phase MOS (metal-oxide-silicon) technology. Basically the engineers designed integrated circuits (manufactured by specialist companies, but mainly Plessey) to be used in telecom products, to reduce size, power consumption and cost. The ‘four-phase’ aspect of the design enabled very low power consumption, and computer-aided design, using home-grown software for simulation, before the designs were sent for manufacture. This process created almost error-free designs and eliminated costly reruns.
The company persuaded the GPO to invest in some new innovative products, which would extend the life of its Strowger telephone exchanges. These included the Impulse Regenerator, The Register-Translator, Changed Number Interceptor, Call Transfer Unit and, later, the SX2000. The main product in these early days in Malmesbury was The Register-Translator, which was manufactured in Airdrie and shipped to almost 200 exchanges around the UK. One was also sold to TLP in Portugal.
At the same time, the company was also developing new types of telephones. Initially it designed a separate dialling unit (called the Sphericall, but also dubbed the Ballcall, because of its shape). This used push buttons, rather than a dial, and generated both tones and pulses for signalling to the exchange, depending on the type of exchange. This led to the design of push button telephones for the GPO, which had a monopoly in those days. The first of this new generation of telephones was the Ambassador, (a design heavily influenced by the GPO, and also manufactured by Plessey, and GEC) followed by a cost-reduced version, the Statesman, (heavily influenced by TMC) which boasted a single screw to fasten the top and bottom together. These were manufactured in Airdrie, replacing the older dial telephones over the next few years. They were also exported, mainly to The Gulf States (and Hull!).
Product design was also starting to be influenced by Philips, which wanted to make TMC into what was called then, a Concern Centre for product design.
The Philips Influence
When TMC moved to Malmesbury the site was very little changed from Ekco days, with pre and Second World War buildings still in use, including The Tower, which was originally used for testing radar in the 1940s and in which the development of the Register-Translator was completed in around 1978. There was also some manufacture on site of PMBXs, which was eventually closed, and converted to pre-production manufacture of new designs before they were transferred to Airdrie for volume manufacture.
Philips set about transforming the Malmesbury site. It had several buildings demolished, mainly unwanted manufacturing units from the 1940s, and replaced them with an engineering building and later added a marketing building. Some older units were retained, because the company was expanding so quickly. Cowbridge House was retained, along with the Old Mill, used in those days as a recreation centre with bar and staff shop.
A word here about the Philips company. It had a development unit in Holland, which had designed a public switch called the PRX and another Concern Centre, which designed a range of PABXs called the Sopho-S.
It wanted to expand the markets for these in the UK and elsewhere. Some software development for the PRX, and later the PRX-D, was done in Malmesbury for international markets. Philips Business Systems, based in Cambridge, sold the Sopho-S in the UK.
However, the company needed some lower capacity switches, called key systems, to complement that product in the market for systems below 100 extensions, which at the time was a BT monopoly. (Philips was importing key systems from Japan to sell under its own name in Europe). The Concern Centre for PABXs was in Hilversum and Malmesbury was to be the Concern Centre for key systems, and telephones.
Philips had been on an acquisition trail in Europe, buying up telecommunications companies, in anticipation that the market would be opened, and they would be able to compete in a Europe-wide liberalised telecom market. In addition to Pye of Cambridge in the UK, the company bought TRT in France, and what was to become PKI in Germany, amongst others. This meant that product development was fragmented as each country in Europe, and elsewhere, had its own standards and ways of doing things. (Like electric plugs, there were no two countries with the same telephone line jack and socket, never mind complicated things like send and receive levels and side tone).
Click to enlarge
Market Liberalisation
In the UK at that time the major telecom manufacturers were GEC, Plessey, and STC which between them manufactured almost all BT’s exchange, transmission and customer premises equipment. TMC was on the sidelines, apart from its telephone manufacturing activity. Products were always designed to BT specifications, which meant there were limited export opportunities.
As the market was liberalised in the 1980s, BT lost its monopoly and newcomers entered the market such as Nortel, AT&T (to become Lucent), Mitel and many small importers such as Binatone, Amstrad, and Audioline. There were also new start-ups like London PABXs, Lake Electronics and others.
However, BT had not been sitting idly by during the lead-up to market liberalisation. It had a monopoly of telephones used on direct exchange lines and all private exchanges (PBXs) below 100 extensions. This was a market worth protecting.
TMC Defends BT's Market Share
By far and away TMC’s most significant period as a manufacturing company, since it moved to Malmesbury, began when BT decided to upgrade its installed base of customer premises equipment in the early 1980s. This included its installed base of telephones and small private exchange systems, with under a 100 extensions. (A market valued at the time at around £500 million, of which TMC was to get roughly half).
Up to that period, BT and its forerunner, the GPO, had created a wide range of products for use in small businesses including plansets, (simple boss-secretary systems), key and lamp units, (which was a two line, ten extension system), and small private manual branch exchanges which all had to be hard-wired to make anything work. The main problem, however, was moves and changes; every new extension meant a complete rewire using multiple cables.
In the US, Japan and other places, a revolution had started several years before using electronics, to replace mechanical relays and wiring, with modern designs packed full of features such as call forwarding, ring back when free, intercom and hands free calling. BT urgently wanted to upgrade its customer base with new electronic systems with these features (as they became known) to prevent a mass exodus of customers when the market was liberalised, and to simplify and reduce the costs of moves and changes. TMC, along with others, was invited to make proposals and bid for contracts to design and manufacture such systems.
Well, TMC won a development contract to design a stored program controlled key system for BT, which became known as Herald. This was followed by another product called Ensign. These became the backbone of BT’s attempt to hold onto its grip of the market. They were designed in Malmesbury and manufactured in Airdrie, and in a new factory in Bellshill, near Glasgow, which was needed to cope with the demand. (Other companies like GEC and STC, in particular, tried to get manufacturing contracts for these products, but were unsuccessful as TMC had a head start on tooling and costs and convinced BT that they could deliver on time and to cost).
But all was not well. As TMC manufactured tens of thousands of key systems for BT, and millions of push button telephones (the Statesman in particular), it was sowing the seeds of its own demise.
The Post BT Monopoly Market
It was fairly clear to most people in TMC (Malmesbury) that the glory days wouldn’t last forever and, that to survive, the company needed more than a couple of products, and certainly more than one customer (BT).
The problem was that other customers were difficult to get. Apart from colonial-type markets like the Gulf, parts of Cable & Wireless’ empire, some government outposts, British Rail, Kingston upon Hull and Guernsey the rest of the world was either controlled by monopoly telecom companies, or highly competitive. The highly competitive markets included Japan, Korea and particularly, the US. It was decided that TMC (and Philips) did not feel able to invest to enter these competitive markets. However, it did want to develop a range of products for liberalised European markets, which would be coming along in the next few years. Thus a range of telephones (the ‘KT’ series) and a range of key systems (the ‘KBX’ series) were born. These would be flexible and low cost products able to compete anywhere in the world.
Enter AT&T, Telecom Science Corporation, and Mitel
At about this time, the early 1980s, Philips had entered into a partnership with AT&T, the US telecom giant. AT&T wanted to enter the European market, which it did with Philips offering its products to Philips’ Dutch customer, the Dutch P&T.
Someone must have mentioned to AT&T that they had a ‘facility’ in the UK where the PRX-D was being developed. AT&T saw it as an ideal opportunity to get into the UK market. One thing led to another, and the upshot was that TMC would have to vacate the Malmesbury site, relocate to a building in Milngavie (owned by Collins the publishers, with a lovely view of the Campsie Fells), just north of Glasgow, leaving AT&T in Malmesbury to write code for its US manufactured products. So, in 1986 a mass migration began. Not of people from Malmesbury to Milngavie, but of people from Malmesbury to anywhere they could get jobs. And, that was the end of TMC in Malmesbury.
The site was taken over by AT&T, which became Lucent Technologies when AT&T was forced by US regulators to split its manufacturing operations from its telecom operating company activity. It vacated the Malmesbury site in the early 2000s. Lucent Technologies was merged with Alcatel of France in 2006. That company is currently struggling against competition from Huawei of China, as are most of the world’s remaining few telecom companies.
To be fair, TMC did survive for a few years, until 1995, but was a shadow of its former self. Philips sold it off, in what turned out to be the equivalent of the transaction between BMW and Rover. Mitel, the Canadian company, with main UK location in Newport, Wales bought the core of the old TMC from Telecom Science Corporation (in Receivership) in 1998, the Rover of its day. Farewell TMC-you deserved better… J.G.L.Rhodes (OBE) RIP.
Addendum
During TMC's all too brief period in Malmesbury, the following led the company: -
Dr. James W. Westhead-introduced his 'MD Letters' to galvanise (some would say terrorise) people into thinking deeply before doing anything.
Brian Manley-President of the IEE (now IET), a smooth operator par excellence, in the right place at the right time. Had a vision of the paperless office well before trees were being regularly planted.
Frank Onions-arrived too late to stop the rot. Left after it had begun.
Don McKay- manufacturing supremo, then moved the rest of the company to Scotland.
David Rodgers- came from Plessey, and then went upwards and onwards.
One final note: I was in Nuremberg a few years ago as a guest of Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent), which seems to have acquired all Philips’ telecom businesses. In a corridor were glass cases with old products, proudly displayed with some basic information about each one. In one of them was a KT20 telephone. This was designed in Malmesbury and, as far as I know, is the only one still in existence. Long live TMC Malmesbury, and if you go to Nuremberg, you will see all that is left of it.
 
Layout by spitsortie for ekco-electronics.co.uk