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Directorate of Telecommunications
EQUIPMENT; MADE
By: Steven R Cole
Introduction
This part of the library contains a collection of scanned photographs of equipment and publications associated with the Mobile Automatic Data Experiment (MADE) conducted by the Directorate during the 1970’s.
MADE was a project conducted in response to a growing need by the Police Forces for a speed-up in the transmission of information between control rooms and police vehicles. As voice message traffic continued to increase, police mobile radio systems were becoming more overloaded and the knock-on effect was a greater requirement for radio spectrum and increase in the number of control room staff required to handle the extra traffic.
Since it was clear that a time would come when the increases could not be met, either because of expansion of the voice systems would entail extensions to existing buildings and base radio stations, or because more spectrum was required, it was considered essential to start work on developing a mobile radio data system.
The primary objective of MADE was to find the best methods of coding messages - including mobile location studies - and exchanging them by radio in digital form at speeds up to 80 times greater than corresponding speech messages. Thus, providing greater police efficiency and reducing staffing, spectrum and building demands.
A study group was set up in early 1970 consisting of Home Office telecommunications staff and representatives from five rural/urban police forces surrounding the Romsley Wireless Depot near Birmingham.
continued on page 2 ...
Acknowledgements:
1. Mike Brain for the five MADE Cabin installation pictures.
2. Remaining pictures are believed to be copyright of ‘The Marconi Company’ and were amongst papers recovered from the Home Office Directorate of Telecommunications Technical Library in 1994.
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