THIS view of the Keighley NSF office staff at work in 1947 was supplied by the late Nesta Hoyle, who worked there after leaving the Women’s Land Army and who is sitting at the second desk back on the left.

Conditions look severely businesslike, though the second man back on the right – the only one with a telephone – has what could be a pin-up calendar on the wall beside him!

Originating in Germany in 1932, this firm has arrived at Dalton Mills, Keighley, in 1940, ironically, after being bombed out of Croydon. By then it was called the British NSF Company Ltd, or the British National Switch Factory, its wartime products including “many hush-hush applications that were put to vital national use using radar, communications and aircraft equipment.”.

Advertising under the slogan the Switch People, NSF acquired Ingrow Bridge Works in 1946, employing about 800. Presumably this photograph was intended to illustrate the efficiency of their new office there.