When the then prime minister, Harold Wilson, called Birmingham’s lord mayor, George Barrow, from the top of the a new 177-metre-high tower on 8 October 1965, he was marking a significant leap forward in British telecommunications technology.
The call, made during the building’s opening ceremony, was the culmination of four years of tricky construction. Meant to support a boom in long-distance communication, the tower could handle up to 150,000 telephone conversations and 40 television channels at its launch.
