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BT Archives

AC with 0 elementsArchives in the London Borough of CamdenBT GroupBusiness and industry archivesHistory of telecommunications in the United Kingdom
Online archives of the United KingdomOrganisations based in the London Borough of CamdenPhoto archives in the United Kingdom
BT Holborn Telephone Exchange
BT Holborn Telephone Exchange

The BT Archives is an archive preserving the documentary heritage of the British telecoms company BT and its public sector predecessors. It is designated an official place of deposit for Public Records, for those records created prior to BT's privatisation in 1984. The records include minutes, subject files, photographs, film and advertising material that tell the story of telecommunications in the UK and from the UK to overseas, from the formation of the private telegraph and telephone companies in the nineteenth century to the present day.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article BT Archives (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

BT Archives
High Holborn, London Holborn (London Borough of Camden)

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N 51.518 ° E -0.1165 °
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University of the Arts London

High Holborn 272
WC1V 6LS London, Holborn (London Borough of Camden)
England, United Kingdom
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BT Holborn Telephone Exchange
BT Holborn Telephone Exchange
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Sir John Soane's Museum
Sir John Soane's Museum

Sir John Soane's Museum is a house museum, located next to Lincoln's Inn Fields in Holborn, London, which was formerly the home of neo-classical architect, John Soane. It holds many drawings and architectural models of Soane's projects, and a large collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings and antiquities that he acquired over many years. The museum was established during Soane's own lifetime by a Private Act of Parliament in 1833, which took effect on his death in 1837. Soane engaged in this lengthy parliamentary campaign in order to disinherit his son, whom he disliked intensely. The act stipulated that on Soane's death his house and collections would pass into the care of a Board of Trustees, acting on behalf of the nation, and that they would be preserved as nearly as possible exactly in the state they were at his death. The museum's trustees remained completely independent, relying only on Soane's original endowment, until 1947. Since then, the museum has received an annual Grant-in-Aid from the British Government via the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. From 1988 onwards, a programme of restoration was carried out, with spaces such as the Drawing Rooms, Picture Room, Study and Dressing Room, Picture Room Recess and others, restored to their original colour schemes, and in most cases having their original sequences of objects reinstated. Soane's three courtyards were also restored with his pasticcio (a column of architectural fragments) being reinstated in the Monument Court at the heart of the Museum. In 1997 the trustees purchased the main house at No. 14 with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund. The house was restored and has enabled the Museum to expand its educational activities, to re-locate its Research Library, and create a Robert Adam Study Centre where Soane's collection of 9,000 Robert Adam drawings is housed. Some of Soane's paintings include works by Canaletto, Hogarth, three works by his friend J. M. W. Turner, Thomas Lawrence, Antoine Watteau, Joshua Reynolds, Augustus Wall Callcott, Henry Fuseli, William Hamilton and 15 drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, many of which are framed and displayed in the museum. There are over 30,000 architectural drawings in the collection. Owing to the narrow passages in the house, all decked with Soane's extensive collections, only 90 visitors are allowed in the museum at any given time, and a formation of queue outside for entry is not unusual. Labels are few and lighting is discreet; there is no information desk or café. In the year ending March 2019, the museum received 131,459 visitors.

Novelty Automation
Novelty Automation

Novelty Automation is an amusement arcade of satirical game machines in Holborn, London. The machines are constructed by cartoonist and engineer Tim Hunkin, often by hand, and the arcade includes an expressive photo booth, an interactive divorce and a "small hadron collider". The arcade also includes three of Hunkin's machines which were once on display at Cabaret Mechanical Theatre's Covent Garden exhibition: The Frisker, Test Your Nerve and The Chiropodist.Opened in February 2015, Novelty Automation is Tim Hunkin's second arcade, the first being The Under The Pier Show in Southwold where he first decided to ‘re-invent’ amusement arcadesand allowed a hobby to take over his lifeNovelty Automation is Hunkin's paean to the local history of popular entertainment in London, a place he has said he has an almost "missionary zeal" for. Hunkin has professed his sadness for the commercialisation of the city and he believes people appreciate Novelty Automation's political incorrectness and it being an antidote to the corporatisation of fun.Discussing the venue's Housing Ladder slot machine, in which a player walks the treadmill steps of a physical ladder in order to move an automated figure towards a model house, Hunkin has said "I don’t think political art has an enormous effect, but in the short term it is satisfying to reinforce people’s disrespect of the villains." Hunkin spoke more on the subject at a talk he gave at Novelty Automation in November 2016 arguing that reinforcing people's disrespect for its targets is the primary purpose of satirical art, "but in the long term it can also contribute to change: there comes a point where the villains can no longer laugh it off". Hunkin's machines at Novelty Automation have a technological style that blends old school electromagnetic approaches to movement - motors, pulleys and gears – with some aspects of more modern technology, used for video, sound and programming. Hunkin believes he is exploring a "limitless territory" and that modern world is too focused on “amazing software and simple physical interfaces… very few machines are the other way round".