16 Facts About TXE

TXE, was a family of telephone exchanges developed by the British General Post Office, designed to replace the ageing Strowger systems.

TXE was told that this was impossible and he could not say he had already done it with Colossus because he was bound by the Official Secrets Act.

Manager at AEI decided that reed-electronic space-division switching was the way to go, and it was then that the term 'TXE' was coined, even although the reed relays themselves were not regarded as electronic components.

TXE1 was developed by three members of the Joint Electronic Research Committee which was formed in 1956 and lasted until 1969.

Prototype for the exchange which the GPO called TXE2 was a system called Pentex, which, starting in 1963, was developed by Ericsson Telephones, as part of Plessey.

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The first TXE2 was installed at Ambergate, some 20 miles from the Plessey factory at Beeston, and opened on 15 December 1966.

Pentex system, which evolved beyond TXE2, was exported to over 30 countries and was largely responsible for Plessey winning the Queen's Award for Exports in 1978.

Unlike the preceding rural Strowger exchanges the TXE2s were equipped with an uninterruptible power supply with auto-starting diesel generators.

Grade of service in a TXE2 was dependent on the number of customers in an A-switch group, with access to just 25 A-B trunks.

Choice of the main type of memory used in the TXE2 was particularly characteristic of the general design philosophy, that the components used had to be of a technology that had been tested over many years.

TXE4 is sometimes known as TXE4RD where the RD stood for Rectory Design.

TXE4 had two standard teleprinters, which logged fault indications and other information.

TXE4A dispensed with Dimond rings and used solid state memory.

TXE4E replaced the ten Miniature Threaded Wire Stores of the TXE4 with two units, each containing six chips which were removable and re-programmed with a separate computer.

TXE5 is believed to have been reserved for an improved version of the TXE2.

TXE6 was an electronic common control exchange that was designed to extend Strowger exchanges, and known as the Electronic Reed Selector System or Reed Group Selector .