Remember these.? All our yesterdays

[myglaren]

I was 21 and about to venture abroad.

[mickthemaverick]

I had completed the first year of my apprenticeship which included a two day course on fire control. We were introduced to the Red Water extinguisher, the Green Gas (CO2 I believe) and the Cream foam extinguisher. We carried all three types in Telephone Exchanges to deal with the various types of fire that may occur!! Later a black extinguisher was introduced but I cannot remember what it contained!!

[bobins]

Green would probably have been Halon, and black was usually CO².

[mickthemaverick]

Having just looked that up you are quite right bobins except that we knew the green ones as BCF (Bromochlorodifluoromethane) extinguishers which it seems is the same as Halon. The CO2 ones were not covered on our course and I believe they came in in the early 70s to replace the BCFs

[NewcastleFalcon]

Graces Guide...Reed and Campbell May have even provided Word of the day amongst these well chosen ones



Neil

[CitroJim]

Having just looked that up you are quite right bobins except that we knew the green ones as BCF (Bromochlorodifluoromethane) extinguishers which it seems is the same as Halon. The CO2 ones were not covered on our course and I believe they came in in the early 70s to replace the BCFs

Although often in brass pumps and thus self-coloured, I have distant vague memories of Pyrene fire extinguishers being green too...

They were pretty bloody lethal in retrospect, being full of carbon tetrachloride

I've a feeling I used to see them in dad's GPO vans...

[Gibbo2286]

These are in my workshop and my kitchen.

[mickthemaverick]

That is the exact same BCF extinguisher as the ones we had Gibbo!

[Rp0thejester]

How are you lot still alive after using them!!!!!!!! and they say smoking is bad...I know you'll all comment....or will you I will say though, that fire extinguisher is very stylish and alot better looking than modern ones. The one I posted not the green ones

[mickthemaverick]

I have only ever used an extinguisher once in anger, that was to kill a small flare up in the workshop resulting from welding too near to a pile of oily rags. I had a foam extinguisher among my selection and I doused it with probably less than a quarter of the contents. Horrible mess to clear up though!! However when I had my workshop in the farmyard another company run by the owner of the farm actually traded in fire systems. His vans frequently returned after inspections with out of date appliances which then had to be emptied before being returned for recycling. We had some fun fights with the water ones but the foam and gas were just vented into a huge pit and allowed to decay naturally.

[bobins]

A lot of public think that a fire extinguisher is a 'get out of jail free' card, whereas in reality their uses are very limited. They'll put out a small fire (waste paper basket sized, etc), but their main use is to knock down a fire just enough so you can get past it and make a tactical withdrawal to a safer place. A mate used to be in the fire brigade and he always used to say that the idea was that you threw the fire extinguisher at what you thought was the base of the fire then ran in the opposite direction of it very quickly

As for the Halon extinguishers - they were banned* due to their penguin and polar bear killing abilities as they were a rich source of ozone depleting chemicals

*- except in very limited circumstances.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Definitely supplied the slide film for 1965 Rail Rover holiday in Scotland, must have disappeared now...

Neil

[CitroJim]

There's been a fair old revival of traditional photography in recent times... It's being slated as the 'vinyl of the photographic world'

I do know the old Ilford FP4 monochrome film is easily available these days, along with the infrastructure to develop and print it...

Whether or not it's made by the old original Ilford company I don't know...

[myglaren]

I have a roll here!

Correction, thought I had but it is Afapan 100. Had it since 1978!

Started out with Ilford film, developing it in a Patterson tank, under the stairs in a mate's house.
Camera was an Halina back then, mid sixties.

[NewcastleFalcon]

There's been a fair old revival of traditional photography in recent times... It's being slated as the 'vinyl of the photographic world'

I do know the old Ilford FP4 monochrome film is easily available these days, along with the infrastructure to develop and print it...

Whether or not it's made by the old original Ilford company I don't know...

As I paged through graces guide and wiki about ILFORD it has gone through many hands, and factory moves but as you say Jim you can still get a branded "Ilford Photo-Harman Technologies" product today. Alfred Hugh Harman being the original founder back in 1879. In the 1960's when this little crop of transparencies were born, they were owned by ICI.

Neil
https://www.ilfordphoto.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilford_Photo
https://gracesguide.co.uk/Ilford