The Enderby Group has been handed some issues of the Telcon Company Magazine from the early 1950s - Telcon, of course, was the name of one of the predecessor firms to Alcatel at Enderby Wharf, although essentially there is a continuum for work from one to the other. GIHS has had access to these and intends to publish some of the articles in them here.
Below is an article about exhibits in the 1851 Great Exhibition. We can date this article to 1950 when preparations for the Festival of Britain were underway and Telcon was anxious to prove 100 years continuity of work and progress
TELCON AT THE 1851 & 1951 EXHIBITIONS
by L.R. Nicholson
Did you know that Telcon was represented at the famous 1851 exhibition
in the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, the centenary of which will be commemorated
in the Festival of Britain? Yes! Telcon has the distinction of being among the select band of exhibitors represented at both exhibitions, for we are showing many
of our products, including gutta percha
insulated submarine cables, in several
sections of the South Bank Exhibition.
We mention gutta percha insulated submarine cables specially, for our 1851 exhibits were made of gutta percha, the
application of which, as a submarine
cable insulant, was destined to make Telcon
world-famous in the field of international communications. Replicas of a few of
our 1851 exhibits, produced with the
original gutta percha moulds, are to be shown in the independent centenary exhibition to be
held in the galleries of the Victoria
and Albert Museum.
The story of our association with the Hyde Park Exhibition
is intriguing. This ambitious undertaking was the culmination of many years' hard and.at
first, discouraging work by the Royal
Society of Arts, its energetic secretary Francis Whishaw, and others.
Whishaw started a scheme in 1844 for an annual exhibition of national products with money prizes for
the makers of articles of good design,
but met with little support from manufacturers.
However, before he left the Society to join the staff of Telcon's parent Company
The Gutta Percha Company, at Wharf
Road, as an engineer he had two small
exhibitions and had seen a committee formed
to find ways and means of producing an annual show and of obtaining the patronage and interest of the Prince Consort, who was President of the Society.
Bigger and better exhibitions, continued to be shown at the
premises of the Royal Society of Arts.
In 1848 the display was visited by
73,000 people, and in 1849 the premises
proved to be quite inadequate, so well
was the exhibition patronised.
Eventually the Prince
Consort the President of a Royal Commission, the purpose of which was
to consider the organization of an
international exhibition in 1851, and a
great deal of the eventual success of this exhibition was due to his personal enthusiasm, ability, and
drive.
The Telcon Story, it
will be recalled, tells how Henry Bewley and Charles Hancock, the founders of The Gutta Percha Company, quarrelled violently over the right to use a wire-covering
machine, and how Hancock broke away to form his own company known as the West Ham Gutta Percha Company. A bitter competitive war was waged by these two concerns, culminating eventually in the
latter's bankruptcy, but both had their
exhibits at the Crystal Palace in Hyde
Park in 1851.
The Gutta Percha Company must have had an impressive display, for it included
samples of raw gutta percha, waterproof
cloth, fishing net floats, driving
bands, both round and square, decorated
frames, and ceiling centres and
mouldings in imitation carved oak and rosewood.
But, strangely enough, having made the
first submarine telegraph cable, which was laid across the Straits of Dover in
1850 and marked the beginning of a vast network of under-sea cables throughout
the world, and being engaged during the
period of the 1851 exhibition in the
manufacture of a second cable to cross
the English Channel, the Company did
not show any of this gutta percha
insulated conductor.
Another point of interest concerns the gutta percha ornaments exhibited in 1848 and 1849 at the Royal Society of Arts. Charles Hancock was a great artist (he had a picture accepted by the Royal Academy when he was 19 years of age), and it was he who
designed these figures "Stag and
Dog" and similar articles when he was with our Company at Wharf Road.
These same exhibits were to be seen at Hyde
Park in 1851, but on the stand of the rival company which Hancock had started
at West Ham in opposition to The Gutta Percha Company.
No monetary prizes were given to exhibitors at the Crystal Palace. The Council Medal was awarded sparingly, and only to firms whose products possessed originality as well as outstanding excellence, whilst the second medal, known as the Prize Medal, was an award of merit only. Out of 14,000 exhibitors,
170 Council Medals and nearly 3,000
Prize Medals were presented, and our Company
had the honour of receiving one of the
coveted Council Medals.
Most of the exhibits
were for sale, and Queen Victoria made
many purchases. Incidentally, The Gutta Percha Company made a bargain when it bought a powerful beam engine which was installed at Wharf Road immediately after the exhibition closed. It supplied power to the whole of the factory, and Chatterton, who gave his name to the famous compound, when he was works manager of the Gutta Percha Company, owned a lead works next door and had this plant powered also from the same engine. This amazing machine worked continuously
from 1851 until 1933, when the Wharf
Road works were transferred to the present
Telcon Works at Greenwich.
Manufacturers will be
acknowledged in the official catalogue
of the Festival of Britain only, but
anyone familiar with TeIcon products will have no difficulty in recognizing our
exhibits in the Transport and Communications, and the Power
and Production sections of the South Bank Exhibition, or at the Victoria and Albert Museum, without
reference to the official list
1 comment:
On my cable history site I have a page on gutta percha which includes a number of photographs from a 1950 Telcon exhibit. It seems likely that the Festival of Britain display would have included some of these items:
Telcon Gutta Percha Exhibit
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