Floor 34, where are you?

Yesterday’s teaser photo is the view of a lift. There are two things somewhat unusual about this lift. The first is the speeed. It is 1,400 feet per minute, which is pretty nifty for a lift, although it sounds a bit lame when it is expressed in Miles per Hour- 15.9MPH. However, your average lift is generally less than half this. Of course, having a fast lift isn’t much use in a not very tall building, as simply moving a few floors will rarely give the opportunity to reach full speed. This lift spends most of its time going between the ground and the 34th floor (in 20 seconds) and is aerodynamically streamlined above and below the car in the shaft to achieve its full potential. Also, unusually, the car is connected to the counterweight both above and below using a second set of ropes to maximise stability.

The other unusual thing about this lift is the height- there is practically as much height above the door lintel as there is below it. A 12′ high lift car outside of a factory is very unusual. The height is for the occasional transportation of equipment, or as the bosses usd to call it- “Apperatus”.

(As an aside, when I used to live in Coventry I had friends who lived in a Council block of flats. One of the two lift cars was bigger than the other- but only by way of a 2′6″ high 18″ deep full width recess at the bottom of the back wall. This was for the benefit of furniture movers- and undertakers. It was known locally as “the coffin lift”. On wondering why they didn’t make the pair of the lifts the same size rather than fit a false wall in one and a boxed-in upper level in the other, it appeared to be that tenants don’t pay any attention to weight limits, just how much square footage of floor is still available. It was a regular occurrence for firemen to rescue substantial numbers of people on occasions…)

Now as can be seen by the designer glass & fibre optic lighting, this is not the sort of elevator that is going to smell of piss and have needles in the corner. That is because this is a showcase location that BT reserve for trying to impress the senior management of the business world, along with the nation on comic relief day. This is the South Lift in London’s Iconic BT tower. (In case you are interested, it is one of the *wow* trilogy, the other two being the research establishment at Martlesham (near Ipswich, now known as Adastral Park) and their Network Operations Control Centre in Oswestry)

Built in the 60s as a crucial hub of the Post Office (Telephones) microwave backbone infrastructure, it became somewhat obsolete when fibre optic backhauls came along and creamed it for capacity. It remains very much in use however, for television broadcast links. (Not transmission to receivers, rather backhaul links to the transmitters and between providers).

The Post Office Tower was recognised as likely to be a tourist attraction on opening, with three floors of viewing galleries (the bottom one open to the elements with mesh instead of glazing) topped by a restaurant that revolved at a stately 2.5 revolutions per hour. I visited the viewing galleries with my Mum and Dad back in the late 60’s (possibly 1970) coming away with a souvenier brochure, a cardboard cutout model and a vivid impression. The lifts then ran at 1,000 feet per minute and there were coin-slot seaside binoculars for taking a closer look at all London had to offer. I also remember that there were toilets on the lowest of the three levels and that it was rather windy up there!

The tower closed to the public in 1971 after a bomb went off in the toilets and whilst the Restaurant eventually re-opened, the viewing galleries did not. The Restaurant kept going until 1980 but the lease (to Billy Butlin) was not extended and it was abandoned.

Eventually, BT capitalised on the setting by transforming it into a showcase area. At ground level, the former gift shop space is now a comfortable lecture theatre with full AV facilities and streaming video functionality. (Major product launches and announcements are often made from here).

Meanwhile, up on the 34th floor, the Restaurant is now a flexible doughnut shaped space generally used for Corporate entertainment. The views are stunning on a clear day, especially if you go up there just before dusk and watch one of the world’s most famous cities light up below you like a giant model village.

I went there roughly ten years ago, for a major product launch. (Featurenet Embark, if you are interested- it sucked.) Afterwards we were transported skywards at teatime and treated to the most spectacular background I have ever seen for Wine and Canapes. (2nd in my personal favourite list was something similar in the Natural History Museum). On leaving, I was presented with a long thin envelope, containing a souvenir brochure and a certificate nicely written in calligraphy.

Yesterday, it wasn’t actually a BT event, it was for a user group of a Contact Centre product that BT are huge Customers (& providers) of. It was a day of presentations, with lunch up the tower. Disappointingly, it was a misty day so the views were a bit dull. The fixed explanatory panels in the tower had been refreshed, as had the floor 35 toilets. The ground floor areas looked a littled jaded in places though and the taps in the toilets were worn. (The integral soap dispensers were all empty and standalone soap pumps looked rather incongruous in the otherwise smart loos).

At the end of the day, we were rewarded with a colourful cardboard tube complete with a (larger) tower history booklet and a panorama commemorative certificate, printed name this time & designed to look as though it had been personally signed by the chairman. (As another aside, we have a genuinely signed certificate by former Chairman Sir Ian Vallance hanging in our downstairs loo).

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with BT and they have given me plenty of reasons to get vexed with them over the years. I have been to a number of high profile visits with them over the years, more so on the basis of trying to retain my business that acquire it. I’ve now done the Tower three times in my life and had a trip to Oswestry. Adastral Park awaits…