Introduction to the History of Pye Telecom
This web site is dedicated to the people who worked
for the radio communications companies at Pye Ltd, Pye
Telecom, Philips Radio Communication Systems, Simoco International,
Sepura PLC, Team Simoco, Simoco Wireless Solutions and other related
Pye and Philips companies and is based on information held in the Pye Telecom Historic Collection.
The Pye Telecom Historic Collection was the Company's own internal
museum, begun in 1975, and retrieved (with permission) from the closure
of Simoco International in 2002. It supplies much of the radio
communications equipment and information for the Pye History Trust. The
objective of preserving the Pye Telecom Historic
Collection material is to ensure that the history,
application and product related technical achievements in radio
communications of Pye Telecom of Cambridge, England, its forerunners
and successors, can be made available for the education of the public,
hence the support and information provided from PTHC to the Pye History
Trust. PTHC is supervised by the Duxford Radio Trust.
Over
more than an 80 year period the radio communications activity of the
Pye Group was known in the UK as Pye Ltd, Pye Telecommunications,
Philips Radio Communications Systems (PRCS), Philips Telecom-PMR,
Simoco International Ltd, Sepura PLC, Team Simoco Group, Simoco
Wireless Solutions etc. and by various other names overseas.
After being purchased
by Philips in 1967, many parts of the Pye Group were sold or closed
down by Philips Electronics UK in the 1970s and 1980s and later by private
equity group Cinven in 2002, but some parts of the company such as
Simoco Wireless Solutions and Sepura PLC have continued to be
active in radio communications to the present day.
The story of Pye in radio communications began in early 1939 with
the involvement of Pye Ltd in the development of Coastal Defence
radar for the Army and airborne radar for the RAF. In 1940 Pye
began work on two-way wireless
equipment for the Army and did initial pioneering work on the artillery
proximity fuze etc. Post World War 2, Pye progressed into the
development of the commercial Private Mobile Radio (PMR) industry using
analogue transmission and 50 years later into the digital
communications of today which use FFSK, TETRA, DPMR and TCP/IP protocols etc.
Grateful
acknowledgments are due to the management and staff of Simoco Wireless
Solutions Ltd of Derby for donating equipment, documents and materials
for this project. Donations of various equipment and documents from other donors are
also gratefully
acknowledged and listed in a separate web page on this site.
Company names and logos used on this web site are or have been registered trademarks of
the respective companies.