This web site is dedicated to the people who worked for the radio communications companies at Pye Ltd, Pye Telecom, Philips Radio Communication Systems, Simoco International, Sepura PLC, Team Simoco, Simoco Wireless Solutions and other related Pye and Philips companies and is based on information held in the Pye Telecom Historic Collection.

The Pye Telecom Historic Collection (PTHC) was the Company's own internal museum, begun in 1975, and retrieved (with permission from the owners Cinven) from the closure of Simoco International in 2002.  It supplies much of the radio communications equipment and information for the Pye History Trust.

The objective of preserving the Pye Telecom Historic Collection material is to ensure that the history, application and product related technical achievements in radio communications and allied fields of Pye Telecom of Cambridge, England, its forerunners and successors, can be made available for the education of the public, hence the support and information provided from PTHC to the Pye History Trust and other collections.  The PTHC is supervised by the Duxford Radio Trust.

Over more than an 80 year period the radio communications activity of the Pye Group was known in the UK as Pye Ltd, Pye Telecommunications, Philips Radio Communications Systems (PRCS), Philips Telecom-PMR,  Simoco International Ltd, Sepura PLC, Team Simoco Group, Simoco Wireless Solutions etc. and by various other names overseas.

After being purchased by Philips in 1967, many parts of the Pye Group were sold or closed down in the 1970s and 1980s by Philips Electronics UK and later in 2002 by private equity group Cinven, but some parts of the company such as Simoco Wireless Solutions and Sepura PLC have continued to be active in radio communications to the present day.

The story of Pye in radio communications began in early 1939 with the involvement of Pye Ltd in the development of Coastal Defence radar for the Army and airborne radar for the RAF.  In 1940 Pye began work on two-way wireless equipment for the Army and did initial pioneering work on the artillery proximity fuze etc.  Post World War 2, Pye progressed into the development of the commercial Private Mobile Radio (PMR) industry using analogue transmission and 50 years later into the digital communications of today which use FFSK, TETRA, DPMR and TCP/IP protocols etc.

Grateful acknowledgments are due to the management and staff of Simoco Wireless Solutions Ltd of Derby for donating equipment, documents and materials for this project.  Donations of various equipment and documents from other donors are also gratefully acknowledged and listed in a separate web page on this site. Various company names and logos used on this web site are or have been registered trademarks of the respective companies.   PTHC was authorised in 2002 by the purchaser of Philips radiocommunications interests (Simoco International/Cinven) to use the Pye name and logo for museum (non-commercial) purposes and the Pye History Trust was authorised in 2017 to use the Pye name and wordmark by Philips Electronics UK.  PTHC and PHT have no affiliation with any non-Philips related trading company utilising the Pye name and wordmark today.

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