Half a million photographs and documents detailing the history of Britain’s role in the development of communications are to be digitised under a £745,000 project.

BT said its archive covers the past 165 years and includes adverts, industrial relations and technological developments and details of the installation of telephones at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. Photographs include the first telephone exchange in 1878, the Duke of Edinburgh making an early mobile phone call in 1955 and the Queen making the first automatic long-distance phone call from Bristol to Edinburgh in 1958. Coventry University, in partnership with BT and The National Archives, has been awarded the money by funding agency JISC to create a digitised online version of the archive. David Hay, head of heritage at BT, said it was an “exciting” venture, adding: “It will use our combined technology and expertise to greatly enhance access, learning and preservation of the history of the world’s oldest communications company.”

It was in 1879 that Sir William Preece of the Post Office Engineering staff, was asked whether he thought the telephone would be an instrument of the future which would be largely taken up by the public. He replied: “I think not. I fancy the descriptions we get of its use in America are a little exaggerated.“But there are conditions in that country which necessitate the use of instruments of this kind more than here. Here we have a superabundance of messengers, errand boys, and things of that kind.”