Jim Warman

Bloomfield James "Jim" Warman (25 July 1924 – 21 November 1984) was a most gifted English electrical engineer. He was born at Westcombe Park in South London. During the Second World War he served in the REME.

Warman 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 concept of both TXE1 and TXE3, which were reed electronic exchanges, whose detailed development was carried out by a consortium of British telecom manufacturers in conjunction with the BPO. The ideas in these exchanges were later developed in the successful TXE4 exchanges, although not by Warman.

Warman 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 AEI took over the company. AEI was then taken over by GEC, who, in 1968, closed down the development of TXE exchanges in favour of crossbar. This turned out to be a big mistake, as Warman was only too aware. All the AEI staff were sacked, including those on the TXE project, and it was then that Warman joined GTE International, the American company, as European technical director based in Milan, along with some members of his team from AEI. However, Warman persisted in basing his developments on reed electronic (analogue) principles, when it had already become clear that fully electronic digital switches were now the obvious path forward. Some time later, GTE decided to closedown the development team in Europe and so Warman’s work came to an end, at least for GTE. He returned to the UK and set up his own company, but it was not a success, and his health failed, which led to an early and impoverished death.

It 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 1990s, catered for more than 25% of the UK subscribers.

Warman did receive one award, and that was the Prince Phillip Medal of The City and Guilds Institute in 1966.