NASA leadership who provide overall guidance and direction to the US government executive branch agency NASA, under the leadership of the NASA administrator. In the 1840s there were, in addition to the chief office at St. Martin’s Le Grand, four branch offices in London: one in the City at Lombard Street (in part of the old headquarters building); two in the West End at Charing Cross and Old Cavendish Street near Oxford Street; and one south of the Thames in Borough High Street. In addition, there was the need to make comprehensive repairs, and upgrades to a network which had been severely degraded by war, and lack of investment. NASA has been funding research in spaceflight at private aerospace companies for years, and that investment is about to finally pay off as they’ve selected Boeing and SpaceX to share the money in their private space taxi contract. 2017 IEEE Aerospace Conference. Letters targeted for interception by the Special Investigations Unit were steamed open and the contents photographed, and the photographs were then sent in unmarked green vans to MI5.

During the Second World War, and for some years after, a department called the GPO Special Investigations Unit was responsible for intercepting letters as part of British intelligence service operations. The unit had branches in every major sorting office in the UK and in St Martin’s Le Grand GPO, near St Paul’s Cathedral. This left Smirke’s building (‘GPO East’) to function mainly as a sorting office. The head office of the General Post Office was firmly established in the City of London by 1653, in a sizeable building at the lower end of Threadneedle Street (by the junction with Poultry, Cornhill and Lombard Street). In March 1966 after all London (and other Director) exchanges were automatic, all-figure dialling was introduced. The Post Office began to introduce automatic switching, and replaced all of its 6,000 exchanges. Evelyn Murray, who served as Secretary until 1934, was not replaced when he left office.

Sir Ronald German was replaced by John Wall on 1 November 1966, who had been brought in from the private sector to serve as ‘Deputy Chairman of the Board’ in preparation for the GPO’s disestablishment. It highlighted defects in the structure of the organisation and recommended creation of a new Board (to be chaired by the Postmaster-General) and a new official: the Director-General, who would serve as vice-chair ‘with the duty of ensuring that board decisions were made effective and that continuity and unity of policy were maintained’. In 1910 the King Edward Building was opened on King Edward Street (immediately to the west of GPO North) to serve as the new ‘London Chief Office’ in place of Smirke’s GPO East; the latter was then demolished two years later. London Postal Region and London Telecommunications Region for the capital and surrounding area. Responsibility for telecommunications was given to Post Office Telecommunications, the successor of the GPO Telegraph and Telephones department, with its own separate budget and management. The upper floors of the new building housed the GPO’s newly-acquired telegraph department; but as this fast expanded, more space was needed and in the 1890s a separate new headquarters building was opened (‘GPO North’), immediately to the north of the telegraph building.

In the early 20th century various different departments of the General Post Office (most of which had begun their days in St Martin’s Le Grand) were provided with their own headquarters in different parts of London: the Post Office Savings Bank was in Blythe House, West Kensington; the Postal and Money Order office in Manor Gardens, off Holloway Road; the Stores Department was in Studd Street, Islington and the Telephone Department in Queen Victoria Street (in what became the Faraday Building). In 1874, a new headquarters building (‘GPO West’) was opened on the western side of the street, containing a suite of public rooms and offices for the Postmaster General, the senior officials and all their administrative staff. Having outgrown its premises in Lombard Street, the General Post Office purchased slums on the east side of St. Martin’s Le Grand and cleared them to establish a new headquarters, Britain’s first purpose-built mail facility.