Remember these.? All our yesterdays

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Peter.N.
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

Yep, same again, coal fire in the living room and a Ideal? boiler in the kitchen for hot water, no it was a 'Crane'. We eventually aspired to a gas fire in the living room, lovely that was you didn't have to wait for it to get hot. Round 5 amp two pin sockets and a 10 amp 2 pin!. Ironclad and ceramic fuse boxes. Rubber mains wiring which by the time I got married was falling apart.

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by MattBLancs »

Ah VRI (vulcanised rubber insulated) or old name VIR (vulcanised Indian rubber) found a bit, still live, in our house. As you say, goes brittle and insulation drops off when disturbed.

Also found a bit of lead sheathed cable, but fortunately that was long since dead.

I don't remember round pin plugs in service - but my dad does. Told me a tail:

Had a floor lamp on his parents house, as floor standing it has the larger plug on it (15 amp rather than the smaller 5 amp size/rating) his young and curious mind had formed a hypothesis: that if the tiny wire in a light bulb made a good amount of light, then a bigger piece of metal would make much more light.

And so it was thus - by simply dropping a ball bearing into the live (bulb removed) bayonet fitting he was able to both test the theory, blow the main ring fuse and get himself in a whole heap of trouble all in a mere fraction of a second!

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by myglaren »

We had the round-pin plugs/sockets. The house when my parents bought it had just been wired (no rewired. Belonged to the owner of one of the two electrical companies in town, the electrician who wired it lived on the other side of the street.
The gas mantles were all still in place from the gas lights.
My dad rewired it and extended the wiring when I was about 20 and put square 13A sockets in place of the round ones.
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Gibbo2286 »

We didn't have hot water, it was installed by the council after I'd married and left home.

We lived in a cardboard box in a hole in the road, :-D Remember that show?
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by mickthemaverick »

An addendum to my earlier post. Once I had moved on to secondary school Mum went back to work and the result in a couple of months time was our first fridge. I think it was an Electrolux but not sure. What amused me though was that when you first turned it on you had to ignite it with a match held over the oval pipe at the back!! Yes it was a gas powered fridge!! Her next purchase some months later was an AEG spin dryer and a Hoover wash tub. As close as she ever came to owning a washing machine!! Right into her late eighties she insisted on doing all washing by hand but using the hot tub/wash boiler for sheets and curtains instead of the bath which had been her previous method!! All clothes were washed in the kitchen sink and dried in the old faithful spin dryer prior to hanging out or in weather dependant!! Needless to say she never owned a steam iron either, making do with her 1950s Morphy Richards basic model all her life. I replaced its element twice over the years!! :-D
Similar to ours
Similar to ours
Ours was the AEG version
Ours was the AEG version
The wash tub that outlived Mum
The wash tub that outlived Mum
The iron which also survived
The iron which also survived
Our electic supply consisted of one 15A socket in the dining room and one in the front room. Initially that is why we had a gas fridge!! Then Dad's mate put in another 15A 3 pin round socket in the kitchen for the wash appliances. We could only use one at a time!! All wired in lead iirc and the two living room sockets having adapters giving 2 x 2pin 5A and 1 15A 3 pin outlet at each site!! All those were star wired from two wired 30A fuses in the 4 way consumer unit. The other two fuses were feeding the upstairs and downstairs lighting circuits, all 2 wire!! There were no power sockets upstairs at all! When I bought the house from my parents in 1973 my first job was to install 13A ring mains upstairs and downstairs, rewire all the lighting with 3 wire circuitry and bring the consumer unit up to a 6 way to cater for future expansion :-D We have a 24 way in this house!!!

As for your cardboard box in a hole in the road Gibbo.........Luxury!!!! :-D
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

Matt

I am aware that it was VIR but as this is a car forum thought I had better explain. :wink: We had an electric kettle on the worktop opposite the light switch in the kitchen, I reached across to it while holding the kettle, touched one of the plate securing screws and got a belt off it, I removed the plate to find all the rubber had dropped off and the live lead was touching the securing bracket. One of my earliest shocks to add to the thousands I received during 50 years in the TV trade.

My first job was in a radio, TV and photographic shop in London in 1954, they had some strange electrical systems at that time. Ours had 120 volts either side of earth, they were in the process of converting it into an normal supply but they had jumped the gun a bit by installing a modern consumer unit which of course had no fuse in the neutral side - I expect you can guess what's coming - the exuberance of youth caused me to try shorting the 'neutral' to earth, there was a loud bang and it all went dark, we were in the basement by they way, when I regained my senses not only our shop was in darkness but so was the demonstration room where someone was having a projector shown to them and the insurance company next door. I was sent out to a call across London and was told not to appear again until the morning. I left soon afterwards ... but got a job in the TV shop just round the corner to where I lived.

Myglaren

We didn't have gas lamps although I went to places that they did and had battery radios. Our house was 'Modern' 1937 with an underground power supply although we had gas street lamps. They built a new estate a little way from us just after the war and destroyed a beautiful rhododendron grove in the process, that was the first estate that I had seen wired with 13a plugs but they weren't the square pin ones, they had round pins and the live one unscrewed, it was the fuse. the fuses were comparatively expensive in those days and I would often hear people complaining about the cost in the shop.

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by MattBLancs »

Ah a nice coincidence there then Peter - undeterred by his early adventures with electricity my Dad took himself off to night school and went on to fix TVs in a couple of firms (Multi Broadcast, then formed a cooperative independent business in Preston)

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

Ah right Matt. I never had any formal qualifications but in the '50s there was such a shortage of TV engineers if you could repair TVs you could get a job almost anywhere, I could and I did. Went self employed in '63 whe we got married, nearly starved for the first couple of years but eventually covered our costs.

When we moved here in 1970 I started up on my own again doing second hand TVs for sale or rent after a spell of doing part time work for a couple of local firms, the business went mad, apparently I was the only one in west Dorset and East Devon that was doing s/h TV's. Retired in 2004 and still here.

Did eventually get a qualification, City and Guilds two part amateur radio exam but that wasn't until the '80s

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

This one is on a 1981 Vauxhall Cavalier 2000 LS Saloon auctioned today at Hampsons
https://auctions.hampsonauctions.com/au ... n/?lot=794

Whatever happened to Zeibart! :?:

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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by CitroJim »

Something that came up in my blog but maybe worth sharing here too...

Back in the days when portable transistor radios were expensive and car radios especially so...

There was once a solution - a dual purpose radio that lived in a cradle in the car and could easily be pulled out to use as a normal portable...

This is an example I have in my collection... Sadly lacking the cradle...
20221104_061203.jpg
This one dates from the early 60s and is uses OC series germanium transistors on a traditional wired chassis...

It still works exceedingly well but is no longer very portable as its PP7 battery is now practically unobtainable...
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

Might this be a suitable solution, Jim?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115536471347 ... R_bSyqCIYQ
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by CitroJim »

Hell Razor5543 wrote: 04 Nov 2022, 09:47 Might this be a suitable solution, Jim?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115536471347 ... R_bSyqCIYQ
That's a great find James :) A bit pricey though but against that, nicely crafted... A vintage radio forum I frequent have scans many obsolete battery cases to enable good replicas to be made if you have the skills... I don't really...

As the radio is not in use, a job for a wet Sunday afternoon I think...

Several of my transistor radios in regular use, a coupe of Hackers and a Roberts, use the PP7's bigger sibling - the PP9. Happily these remain readily available at a good price...

Something must still use them in large numbers but as yet I've not discovered just what. There's some evidence to say high-end scientific kit use them and some sources describe them as lantern batteries - I wonder if they are used in the yellow flashers that sit on top of cones at roadworks?

Looking at the outer profile of one of these lanterns this may be possible and one morning during a very early run I tried to open one on some local roadworks but failed... The battery compartment appears fairy tamper-proof and I was not going to try too hard in case CCTV was watching me ;)
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by bobins »

I've got an old radiation monitor that uses a 'D' cell sized battery but at 6v. Whoever thought of that one ? :roll: It was a military spec battery and I've never found a replacement so the monitor remains inoperative. In theory it's possible to fit 4 AAA cells into that format, but it's extremely tight for space. :(
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by mickthemaverick »

bobins wrote: 04 Nov 2022, 10:16 I've got an old radiation monitor that uses a 'D' cell sized battery but at 6v. Whoever thought of that one ? :roll: It was a military spec battery and I've never found a replacement so the monitor remains inoperative. In theory it's possible to fit 4 AAA cells into that format, but it's extremely tight for space. :(
Could you not use a column of 1.2V Lithium button cells bobins? :)
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Re: Remember these.? All our yesterdays

Post by Peter.N. »

I remember them well Jim. 0C44, OC45 0C71and a pair of 0C72s or 81s if its later. Do you remember the Pye TR2000 car radio I think it was, used valves with 12v HT and an 0C16 single ended output with a matching transformer, sounded brilliant. 8-)

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