51.5215°N 0.1389°W . Post Office Tower, 60 Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia W1T 4JZ

December 29, 2010 at 2:26 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

It is the explosion which brings the tower into visibility. Omitted from maps until the mid-1990s under the Official Secrets Act, something to do with the realingnment of geopolitical forces, its existence marks another shift, that towards telecommunications and the digital. The Post Office Tower was opened in 1965 by the  Prime Minister, the developers and the Postmaster General. Since the 17th Century the Postmaster General was responsible for maintaining the postal system; then in the 19th that was joined by electric telegraphs and finally crowned with telecommunications and broadcasting. A central piece of infrastructure responsible for relaying the microwave traffic of London.  These have mostly been replaced by Subterranean fibre optic links. The tower holds the TV Network Switching Centre which carries broadcasting traffic and relays signals between television broadcasters, production companies, advertisers, international satellite services and uplink companies. In 2009, an all-round LED display system was installed and on 31 October 2009 the screen began displaying a countdown to the start of the London Olympics in 2012. There is rumour that it will reopen for the Games.

The tower is being used in a study of the air quality in London, monitor pollutant levels above ground level, to determine the contribution to pollution made by different sources – including the long-range transport of fine particles from outside the city.

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