Background
He was born at Westcombe Park in South London.
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Jim Warman
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Career
During the Second World war he served in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Jim was a charismatic character and leader of men who was at the forefront in the design of electronic telephone exchanges in the 1960s and 70s. He was responsible for the design of both TXE1 and TXE3 which were reed electronic exchanges. The ideas in these exchanges were later developed in the successful TXE4 exchanges, although, for political reasons, not by Jim.
Jim held over 100 patents but the recognition that he truly deserved eluded him and some say that it was because of his quest for perfection.
His career started off at Siemens Brothers at Woolwich and he remained there when Associated Electrical Industries took over the company. Associated Electrical Industries was then taken over by General Electric Company who, in 1968, closed down the development of TXE exchanges in favour of crossbar.This turned out to be a big mistake, as Jim was only too aware.
Some time later, General Telephone and Electric decided to closedown the development team in Europe and so Jim’s work came to an end, at least for General Telephone and Electric. He returned to the United Kingdom and set up his own company but it was not a success and his health failed which led to an early and impoverished death. lieutenant was a sad end to one of the most gifted and unrecognised engineers of recent times, whose ideas eventually led to providing an electronic telephone exchange system (TXE4) that, at its peak in the early 90s, catered for more than 25% of the United Kingdom subscribers.
Achievements
Membership
All the Associated Electrical Industries staff were sacked, including those on the TXE project and it was then that Jim joined General Telephone and Electric International, the American company, as European technical director based in Milan, along with some members of his team from Associated Electrical Industries.
