Buzzer Training Unit – Telephone Manufacturing Company Ltd. No 453 dated 1928.
TMC was formed to service one company, but grew into a supplier to many companies and Governments. It was never big, but it was always there. Unlike so many of its competitors, TMC survives today.
In 1902 telephones were still a new but now accepted business service, but most businesses still relied on one or two telephones within their building. Firms like Sterling and GEC were selling intercoms, but it was a struggle because of the high costs involved in purchase of the phones and wiring in the new system. Frederick Jackson saw a way around these problems. He had worked for The Private Telephone Company in London, and had risen to become Company Secretary. PTC was a telephone operating company, using equipment imported from H Fuld in Germany. A number of other substantially German-owned operating companies were doing the same in Britain at the time.
PTC was renamed New System PTC, and offered internal telephones for rent rather than purchase. This made it economic to change a business over to phones rather than continue with message wires or speaking tubes.
Jackson left New System PTC and joined a rival company, Intercommunicating Telephones, in 1908. The timing was good, as the British Post Office was now taking over the various operating companies around Britain. Internal phone systems, however; were left alone. He expanded the company, and even took over his old employer, New System. The phones were still supplied by Fuld.