Post Office: Registered Files, Minuted Papers (Telecommunications)

This series comprises minuted papers relating to telecommunication services offered by the Post Office in the period 1929 to 1973. Minuted papers were those papers which had been submitted to the Postmaster General for a decision, and then been judged to be of sufficient importance that they should be retained.

The series is an amalgamation of minuted papers which were only discovered after the cataloguing of earlier minuted files. The papers had a"P" reference denoting their status as Central Registry files.

At first, the papers minuted tended only to be the particular case submitted to the Postmaster General but, as time went on, registry staff followed a practice of continuing to add physically to an existing minuted case all other cases on that subject which came to hand. As a result, the minuted papers frequently consist of quite large bundles of files on a common subject spanning many years.

The date range of the files is consequently often much earlier or much later than the date suggested by the"Former Reference" used by the registry staff and, in many cases, the precise dates covered by the files have not yet been listed.

The subject of individual files among the minuted papers can be wide-ranging, from the mundane administrative minutiae to policy decisions on developments of critical importance.

Within this series of minuted papers, the subjects include satellite communications ("The Early Bird"), international telephone services, policies toward staff and unions, telephone information services (including ship telephone services, roads and weather, teletourist service, speaking clock and the Santa Claus service), technological developments (including telephone kiosks, the answering machine,"The Amplifying Telephone" and"The Laryngaphone").

The records in this series reflect a former arrangement and have since been re-catalogued. Please contact BT Archives for more information.

The current series arrangement reflects that adopted by the Post Office registry. The series is divided into four subseries which mirror the four different minute series which were in use by the Post Office until 1921: Packet Services, England & Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. (POST 29-32).

In 1992 Post Office Archives