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The Post Office Private Teleprinter Broadcast System

Trade Literature
1938 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

The Post Office Private Teleprinter Broadcast System

Publisher:
GPO 1938

Description:
24 unnumbered pages colour illustrations 195 mm

Notes:
Designed by Richard Beck
White plastic comb binding

Names:
Great Britain. Post Office


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleThe Post Office Private Teleprinter Broadcast System (published title)
Materials and techniques
Printed booklet
Brief description
The Post Office Private Teleprinter Broadcast System. GPO, 1938.
Physical description
The Post Office Private Teleprinter Broadcast System

Publisher:
GPO 1938

Description:
24 unnumbered pages colour illustrations 195 mm

Notes:
Designed by Richard Beck
White plastic comb binding

Names:
Great Britain. Post Office


Dimensions
  • Height: 195mm (Note: From NAL catalogue)
Style
Production typeMass produced
Gallery label
(2018)
The Post Office private teleprinter broadcast system
London, 1938
Teleprinters sent telegram messages between post offices. The letters were typed in and immediately transmitted to another machine at a distant location. The GPO's publicity department and film unit, founded in 1933, promoted their use of such new technologies. Richard Beck, influenced by the Modernist design he had studied in Munich, designed the layout of the brochure's cover using lines to suggest the transfer of data between machines.
Halftone and lithography
Designed by Richard Beck (1912–85)
Issued by the General Post Office
Museum no. 38041800898389
Object history
From a collection of examples of commercial printing and design including catalogues and books as well as a variety of ephemera such as magazine covers, promotional cards, loose sheets, book plates, book jackets, trade cards, advertisement proofs, wine labels, menu cards etc. Firms include Shell-Mex, Austin Reed, Guinness, Heals, Imperial Airways, Orient Line. Designers include McKnight Kauffer, El Lissitsky, Bawden, Bayer, Gill, Tschichold. Categories of material include architecture, broadcasting, costume, interior design, motor industry, food and drink.

In 1936 the National Art Library decided to lay the foundations of a "collection of commercial typography and to exhibit contemporary specimens from time to time so that the trend of typographic design, both in this country and abroad, could be appraised by students of industrial art". The Keeper of the Library, Philip James was largely instrumental in acquiring the material. The bulk of the collection consists of examples from the 1930s, especially 1936 - 1939, with a smattering of items from the 1940s.
The collection is further supplemented with material from the 1960s which the Library inherited from the Circulation Department of the Museum after its closure in 1978. As these two groups of material stand as historic collections in their own right, any further examples acquired by the Library have been catalogued individually and not added to this designated 'closed collection'.
Currently uncatalogued. A typescript list is available on request at the Main Counter; this list does not include the material inherited from the Circulation Department.

Other numbers
  • Jobbing Printing Box 8a - NAL Pressmark
  • 904837 - Horizon bib. number
Collection
Library number
38041800898389

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Record createdApril 15, 2016
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