Gone out of fashion

[Terence David Lines]

you have just taken me back to my childhood days living in villa street terence..toast done on an open coal fire....happy days

lyn

As my mother died when I was 3, I spent a lot of my childhood with my grandmother. My father had 4 allotments. I still grow my own shallots and pickle them. Late October and the first week in November I would sit in front of the open fire peeling shallots and filling the galvanised bath with them. Granny Lines lived to be 88 and I remember her what we’re call corned beef legs this was caused by standing in front of the open fire with her dress at the rear held up to get warmed up in winter.

 

[Terence David Lines]

sitting watching the tv eating chestnuts done on the open coke fire

My wife Marion loves roast chestnuts. Remember to pierce the shell or they explode. This we have forgotten on more than one occasion, boy do they make a mess when they explode.

 

[mikejee]

As my mother died when I was 3, I spent a lot of my childhood with my grandmother. My father had 4 allotments. I still grow my own shallots and pickle them. Late October and the first week in November I would sit in front of the open fire peeling shallots and filling the galvanised bath with them. Granny Lines lived to be 88 and I remember her what we’re call corned beef legs this was caused by standing in front of the open fire with her dress at the rear held up to get warmed up in winter.

Filling the galvanised bath? - how many bottles did you fill?

 

[Terence David Lines]

Filling the galvanised bath? - how many bottles did you fill?

My grandmother had some large bottles about the size of the ones that you see on Fish and Chip shop counters. It was usually six of those and the rest went into old style Kilner Jars, there was a shelf full of those at the rear of the coal house.

 

[Richard Dye]

mine was a metal coat hanger bent and twisted to shape

I used the small shovel over a coal fire. For some reason I could always eat them faster than I could cook them

 

[Richard Dye]

My grandmother had some large bottles about the size of the ones that you see on Fish and Chip shop counters. It was usually six of those and the rest went into old style Kilner Jars, there was a shelf full of those at the rear of the coal house.

That is a LOT of peeling!

 

[Morturn]

That is a LOT of peeling!

A lot of crying too

 

[Terence David Lines]

A lot of crying too

Soak them in boiling water. It does not effect the Shallots but the skin rubs off easily.

 

[Richard Dye]

Soak them in boiling water. It does not effect the Shallots but the skin rubs off easily.

I like them right out of the jar!

 

[Terence David Lines]

I like them right out of the jar!

Well someone has to get them right to put in the jar.

 

[Terence David Lines]

mine was a metal coat hanger bent and twisted to shape

My Grandmothers toasting fork, I made in metal work class for her. Can see it now. Three prongs and an extending handle.

 

[oldMohawk]

I presume 'Log Tables' are not used these days and have definitely gone out of fashion. When I left Handsworth Technical School many years ago I forgot to return the one below and still have it !

Looking at the large ink blots on it reminds me that ink and pens with steel nibs are also out of fashion ... and blotting paper ... and 'ink monitors' ...

 

[Terence David Lines]

I presume 'Log Tables' are not used these days and have definitely gone out of fashion. When I left Handsworth Technical School many years ago I forgot to return the one below and still have it !
View attachment 170022
Looking at the large ink blots on it reminds me that ink and pens with steel nibs are also out of fashion ... and blotting paper ... and 'ink monitors' ...

Knib pens giving away your age now. Was your class room ceiling covered in ink spots. We used to soak a piece of blotting paper in the ink then fire it with the ruler onto the ceiling.

 

[oldMohawk]

Knib pens giving away your age now. Was your class room ceiling covered in ink spots. We used to soak a piece of blotting paper in the ink then fire it with the ruler onto the ceiling.

We didn't dare fire ink soaked blotting paper at the ceilings of the schools I attended ...
Notable pranks at the last school I attended were 'water bombs' and comments about them in many posts in the the thread below ...

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/handsworth-technical-school.2884/post-529660

 

[oldMohawk]

Just thinking that Slide Rules have gone out of fashion ... Haven't heard my grandchildren mention them !
I used one at school and also in my early time in a Design Office.

They designed Spitfires, Lancasters, Bridges, and many other things using them ...

I'm realising that many things I used and liked seem to be suitable for this thread ...

 

[Spargone]

I presume 'Log Tables' are not used these days and have definitely gone out of fashion. When I left Handsworth Technical School many years ago I forgot to return the one below and still have it !
View attachment 170022
Looking at the large ink blots on it reminds me that ink and pens with steel nibs are also out of fashion ... and blotting paper ... and 'ink monitors' ...

At least log tables got used. My cohort at university were all told to go out and buy imperial 'steam tables', knowing full well that the next year the faculty was going to go 'metric'.

The only opportunity to use my tables was in a thermodynamics lab based around the steam generator used in diesel locomotives, a 'flash steam' boiler. On the wall of the laboratory was chained a set of large-print steam tables, so mine remained unused.

Our ink monitors were the hefty lads that got to carry a tin bath around at the end of the year collecting up the ink wells. For many of these lads it must have been the first time they were trusted to do anything - (primary school stereotype, hefty lad, bully, bad lad!).

 

[Terence David Lines]

We didn't dare fire ink soaked blotting paper at the ceilings of the schools I attended ...
Notable pranks at the last school I attended were 'water bombs' and comments about them in many posts in the the thread below ...

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/handsworth-technical-school.2884/post-529660

Every ceiling in our school was full of ink spots. You had to put your ruler on the edge of the desk hold it with your left hand put the ink soaked blotting paper on the other end, pull it down and let go. They used to hit the ceiling at pace and stick there.

 

[Terence David Lines]

Knib pens giving away your age now. Was your class room ceiling covered in ink spots. We used to soak a piece of blotting paper in the ink then fire it with the ruler onto the ceiling.

By the way I was not a guilty party. This came about as my teacher who shall remain nameless never questioned why I never went to school on a Thursday, he knew I had gone fishing as he was an angler himself. He would come over on Friday and ask me where I had been and what I had caught.

 

[Spargone]

Just thinking that Slide Rules have gone out of fashion ... Haven't heard my grandchildren mention them !
I used one at school and also in my early time in a Design Office.

They designed Spitfires, Lancasters, Bridges, and many other things using them ...

I'm realising that many things I used and liked seem to be suitable for this thread ...

Slide rules required one to keep track of magnitudes so at least one had a sense of what was a valid answer before the calculation was done. Calculations involving 'pi' needed caution as multiplying or dividing gave the same sort of result!

Do children use calculators now or do they just choose an answer? To think that children in the past had to cope with guineas, grosses, 'pennies in the pound discounts' and farthings!

 

[pjmburns]

Just thinking that Slide Rules have gone out of fashion ... Haven't heard my grandchildren mention them !

Slide rules disappeared from GCSE maths many years ago. In fact I think they went when 'O' levels did.
Log tables continued until it became possible for every pupil to have access to a calculator. i.e. cheap enough to buy

Do children use calculators now or do they just choose an answer?

Multiple choice at GCSE also went a long time ago. These days pupils sit a mix of calculator and non-calculator papers.
I can't comment on use at 'A' level as I only taught to age 16.

 

[mikejee]

Janice
I may be wrong, but I do not remember being allowed to use a slide rule in exams at school.

 

[Richard Dye]

Just thinking that Slide Rules have gone out of fashion ... Haven't heard my grandchildren mention them !
I used one at school and also in my early time in a Design Office.

They designed Spitfires, Lancasters, Bridges, and many other things using them ...

I'm realising that many things I used and liked seem to be suitable for this thread ...

Yes, I used my slide rule all the way through undergraduate university (three science degrees) for everything except statistics when our prof told us they were not accurate enough for statistics! In my final year after stats I got a TI SR11 calculator which even had a square root key and a reciprocal!

 

[pjmburns]

Janice
I may be wrong, but I do not remember being allowed to use a slide rule in exams at school.

I am not sure Mike. I was never taught to use one but had to learn how to teach it's use when I first started teaching (1975). That only lasted a couple of years.
I can't remember about exam use - by the time I taught exam groups (new teachers had to prove themselves first ) the use of the slide rule had gone.

 

[Spargone]

Janice
I may be wrong, but I do not remember being allowed to use a slide rule in exams at school.

I don't think we ever used slide rules at school, only log tables. What we called Pure Maths didn't even require that an answer be evaluated, that was a mechanical 'given'. Did we even need to give a numerical answer for Applied Maths?

 

[Eric Gibson]

The most we got (Left in 1950) was HCFs and LCMs we did a cursory bit of logarithms but it's all forgotten.
Still got a slide rule in my drawer but can't remember when it last came out although I have had cause to use my Vernier gauge on some of the modern car stuff.

 

[oldMohawk]

We were allowed to use slide rules in exams but they inspected them to see if we had written 'crib' notes in them. I went in my garage this morning and found my old slide rule !! It is a 'Faber-Castell' (German) and is made of wood with plastic coating showing the graduations and the cursor is missing and somewhat damaged. It served me well at college and work but I have forgotten how to use it and maybe it should now go in the landfill bin.

I've just remembered that I bought it from the Midland Educational shop.

 

[Brummie a long time ago]

I can put my hands on 3 slide rules, (when I get back home, I don’t take them on holiday ). All in good order, 2 with cases. One is a 6 incher, for the lab coat top pocket. I didn’t use them very much at school, but did for a little while after. I must have learnt how to drive a slide rule at school. A colleague had a circular one, much envy. Give me 10 minutes with one, and I could probably do a simple calculation.
Andrew.

 

[Richard Dye]

I can put my hands on 3 slide rules, (when I get back home, I don’t take them on holiday ). All in good order, 2 with cases. One is a 6 incher, for the lab coat top pocket. I didn’t use them very much at school, but did for a little while after. I must have learnt how to drive a slide rule at school. A colleague had a circular one, much envy. Give me 10 minutes with one, and I could probably do a simple calculation.
Andrew.

Mine is in its case, 12” a K&E log log desi trig, I used it all the time and used to know what that meant, now I have no idea! We

 

[Vivienne14]

We were allowed to use slide rules in exams but they inspected them to see if we had written 'crib' notes in them. I went in my garage this morning and found my old slide rule !! It is a 'Faber-Castell' (German) and is made of wood with plastic coating showing the graduations and the cursor is missing and somewhat damaged. It served me well at college and work but I have forgotten how to use it and maybe it should now go in the landfill bin.
View attachment 170024
I've just remembered that I bought it from the Midland Educational shop.

Is that where the word ‘curser’ came from for the ‘pointer’ on computer screens.

I disliked maths but loved to look at and ‘play’ with my dad’s slide rule. He showed me how to use it but I doubt I’d remember the first thing about them now.

Viv.

 

[pjmburns]

According to google:

Cursor is Latin for 'runner'. A cursor is a name given to the transparent slide engraved with a hairline used to mark a point on a slide rule. The term was then transferred to computers through analogy.