Remember these.? All our yesterdays

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by myglaren »

CitroJim wrote: 17 Oct 2020, 06:05

Oh magic :D Back in the days when so many radio and TV dealers were also cycle dealers...

All stemming from the days when you'd take your wireless LT (filament) accumulator to the local bike shop to be charged... In the days when not every home enjoyed having mains electricity... We take it for granted now but it's a surprisingly recent thing...

It was a logical move for bike shops to become wireless dealers too...
I bought my first bike* from one of the two electrician/radio shop and my first transistor radio from there too. All our TVs and I used to take my grandad's accumulator there for charging every Saturday.

*That is, the first bike that I bought, not the first bike I had.
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

Charging accumulators was one of my first jobs when I started there, we had quite a big charger with a mercury vapour rectifier and three resistive 'baretters' giving three charging lines for umpteen batteries, although we rarely had more than two or three on it.

It said 'Accumulators charged' across the top of the shop window, whish I still had a picture of it.

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by mickthemaverick »

Did you ever come across the AC accumulator Peter? Our apprentices were often sent to the stores to collect one but for some reason they were always out of stock, unlike the long weights which were awarded by the storemen without hesitation! :-D
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

Not heard that one Mick. There was the box with a switch on it and a mains plug, switch wired across the mains!

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Peter.N. wrote: 17 Oct 2020, 08:51 It said 'Accumulators charged' across the top of the shop window, whish I still had a picture of it.
Peter
Not the real thing...but it is 97 Queensway Petts Wood, the bricks are still the originals from when you worked there Peter
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

That's very good Neil. I think our shop sign was a bit more upmarket than that :wink: The fish shop to the left was there when I was but the one on the right was a grocers who used to save his 'OXO' tins for me.

I think that our shop is now a building society but the front looks pretty well the same. I was there from '55 - '63 when I got married and started up on my own. I enjoyed my years there, all the 'new' technology' and I learnt to drive in their nearly new Austin A40 van.

Happy nostalgia.

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by CitroJim »

mickthemaverick wrote: 17 Oct 2020, 09:18 Did you ever come across the AC accumulator Peter? Our apprentices were often sent to the stores to collect one but for some reason they were always out of stock, unlike the long weights which were awarded by the storemen without hesitation! :-D
:lol:
Peter.N. wrote: 17 Oct 2020, 08:51we had quite a big charger with a mercury vapour rectifier
I have some happy memories of mercury vapour rectifiers :D Especially those used in high power radio transmitters for EHT rectification purposes... They glowed a lovely purple colour when the transmitter was radiating and if the transmitter was sending morse at the time you could read the morse from the purple flashing of the rectifiers :)

They could go bang quite spectacularly too...

We used to keep a good number on hot standby, literally... Kept hot so the mercury remained a vapour and thus they could go into service immediately... We handled them with asbestos gloves...

Those were the days...

Peter, were the rectifiers used in battery chargers called 'Tungar' rectifiers? Or am I getting mixed up with something else?
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

Possibly Jim, I know that name from somewhere but I don't really remember.

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

Yes, thank you James - that's what it looked like the Tungar. You were right Jim. I would suspect that it was from the 30s or '40s that was about when the shop originally opened.

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

For anyone who is interested I wrote an article in 'Television' magazine in the '80s about the early days of TV, its largely a technical one so may not interest many but I will put a link in in case.

https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Practi ... 998-05.pdf. Page 478, or Page 24 in the search guide

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Paging through to get to your article Peter I came across this....
Philips is launching two players initially, the DVD930at £500 and the DVD730 at £450.
......In conclusion....
Will DVD succeed where other video disc formats havefailed? Technically, it is definitely superior. But muchwill depend on whether sufficient software to interestpotential customers is available.There seems little doubt that disc technology will ulti-mately replace tape -based systems for many homeentertainment applications. When recordable DVDs arrive, we might see the beginning of the end for VHS.But not even DVD's most ardent supporters expect this to happen for many years.
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Peter.N. wrote: 18 Oct 2020, 12:55 For anyone who is interested I wrote an article in 'Television' magazine in the '80s about the early days of TV, its largely a technical one so may not interest many but I will put a link in in case.

https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Practi ... 998-05.pdf. Page 478, or Page 24 in the search guide

Peter
I would recommend giving Peter's full article a read even if like me you know nothing of tech bits in it. Fascinating story. There's enough in there for a decent screenwriter to pitch something to Channel 5 :-D The TV is full of police/veterinary/doctor-y/mid-wife stuff. Why not TV repair! Bit of scenic Kent and Dorset as a background...I'd watch it :-D
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by bobins »

Difficult to get a decent photo with its glass front, but one mercury arc rectifier (circa 1947) at Amberley today :) It was still in use until 2005 at the battery charging station at Croydon 'B' 33kV substation. The last one I saw in use was still powering one of the lifts for a London Deep Level shelter about 10-15 years ago.
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

Somewhat bigger than mine, but yes, that's the type of thing.

Peter
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