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"It will be noted that each suite commences with a cable turning section (C.T.S.), which, as its name implies, is necessary to turn the switchboard cables from the vertical run through the floor to the horizontal multiple along the switchboard. The C.T.S. is constructed of mahogany panelled to...

As book monitor to our school's headmistress, responsible for disciplining the girls, I was very aware of the time she spent fussing over the hair of the girls. She would tell the tale of the girl who had a headache. It turned out that her laquered beehive was hosting maggots. Now all the girls...

The 'VOX' logo and surround doesn't look like any VOX amp that I have seen and the grille style doesn't look right either. 'Fakir' is a curious name to use also, not like any of the well known amplifier names. It isn't like VOX to describe the 'insides' either i.e. 'FET' 'all silicon', that...

I don't remember a tool for putting in straws but I do remember a tool for removing aluminium caps.

Discussions elsewhere seem to suggest that they were just a fad of the 1950s. Bit like all those indoor TV aerials that came with dishes or other gizmos. (We found that a knitting needle plugged straight into the socket worked very well!).

Wasn't the most common model of pressed steel construction? That one looks to be diecast. I had a diecast model (posted here earlier) that could be used as a water pistol too by putting a a plastic cap over the end.

We had one of those. Another thing we were made fearful of in case it got tipped over. The whole top half had to be swung down to trim the wick or to re-fuel. I'm not sure that it ever got to be in the house, just Dad's workshop. Later we had a rectangular version that was more stable and that...

Mum and Dad bought an electric blanket in the days before central heating. It had a seperate control for each side of the bed. One night Dad got too hot so he turned his control down. Mum was too cold so she turned her control up. That continued throughout the night. In the morning they...

I think that might be more modern, as tried by Derby police in 1966.

We literally sat knee-to-knee in an arc in front of that 9" set. The only thing I remember watching on it was a cartoon in which insects were using half a pea pod as a galley.

From birminghamforum.co.uk Prefabs on Queens Road, Yardley.

That looks like prefabs from the tennis club in the west around to the School Lane footpath and also around the western and northern boundaries of the sports ground, Queens Road/Sedgemere Road. That's interesting because the wood fence around the sports ground has the look of being there 'forever'.

The OS Sheet 131 1950-1959 shows houses on the bend of Queens Road that aren't there now.

I remember my father building a floor-standing TV. It had a 9" tube and the EHT was provided by a pair of transformers so could provide lots of current, far more than ever needed. I don't know where the design came from, probably Wireless World. A few years later he made a table-mounted model...

I didn't realise that Birmingham or more precisely Sutton Coldfield was a pioneer in early British TV. Reading an article on building and operating the View Master, a set that my father also built and operated, it states that London, Alexandra Palace was using double-sideband transmission, while...

The Sunday Mercury of 11 September 1961 puts it in Telephone House, a much more likely candidate I think.

I remember the model aircraft being stored in the General Science Laboratory on the ground floor. One of them was a 'flying wing'. The all used control line flying so just went round and round in a circle. Many of the club members had little stands to hold their single-cylinder motors on which...

You must have taken woodwork with Mr Gibbs in a standalone concrete slab building. It was demolished and replaced by a woodwork and metalwork shop. A new teacher, Mr Greaves, took on the metalwork. During the re-building the woodwork was moved into the Domestic Science laboratory. I remember...

Did they do away with ringing machines in System X exchanges? The only sound in a TXE4 exchange was the sound of the switches making and breaking to produce the ringing cadence from those machines. I also recall an electromechanical pendulum clock that had a curious little switch on the pendulum...

It was amusing watching people use the exchange model in the museum. Because there was only one valid number for each phone to dial that number was on an engraved label above each phone. People who hadn't read the instructions properly would call out to the other party "My number is XXX, what is...