biology

Post Office Research Station

Post Office Research Station is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Post Office Research Station rather than just read about it. In short: The Post Office Research Station was first established as a separate section of the General Post Office in 1909. In 1921, the Research Station moved to Dollis Hill, north west London, initially in ex-army huts.

Key takeaways

Post Office Research Station belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Post Office Research Station to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Post Office Research Station from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Post Office Research Station was first established as a separate section of the General Post Office in 1909. In 1921, the Research Station moved to Dollis Hill, north west London, initially in ex-army huts. The main permanent buildings at Dollis Hill were opened in 1933 by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. In 1968, it was announced that the station would be relocated to a new centre to be built at Martlesham Heath in Suffolk. 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. Much of the rest of the site contains affordable housing administered by Network Housing.

World War II

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, was also told of the secret Bletchley Park establishment. Radley's wartime diaries were declassified in 2019. 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). 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. 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. In 1957, ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) was built for the government's Premium Bond lottery, by Sidney Broadhurst's team. The early studio-based Confravision service developed from experiments using microwave radio links between the Post Office Research Station and Post Office Telecommunication's headquarters in Gresham Street, London. In 1971, Samuel Fedida conceived Viewdata and the Prestel service was launched in 1979.

Later developments In the late 1960s, the Post Office acquired part of the decommissioned RAF Martlesham Heath airfield in Suffolk. 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

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

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Post Office Research Station

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Post Office Research Station claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Post Office Research Station before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Post Office Research Station ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Post Office Research Station

In research: Post Office Research Station appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Post Office Research Station in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Post Office Research Station is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1909 establishments in the United Kingdom, 1921 in London, 1975 disestablishments in the United Kingdom, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Post Office Research Station outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Post Office Research Station in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Post Office Research Station means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Post Office Research Station out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Post Office Research Station in simple terms?

Why does Post Office Research Station matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Post Office Research Station?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Post Office Research Station.