• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

Vintage-technology

  • Thread starter Thread starter billc
  • Start date Start date
electric plug

I can remember doing the ironing for my Mum with one of these two-way plugs, it also stopped the iron flex from dragging across a newly ironed bit of a shirt.
 
It's amazing how more people didn't get killed with those things - using them on electric irons with no earth.
 
Our first TV was bought (along with thousands of others at the time) for the Coronation in June 1953. It was an Ecko 12" with a purple screen, and a bakelite cabinet that weighed about 2 tonnes, and valves the size of beer-bottles. We were under strict instructions from the old man not to touch it. When he came home from work he'd switch the thing on, and we'd wait with baited breath for about half an hour for the thing to warm up. If we were lucky, we'd see Macdonald Hobley reading the news. If we were unlucky we'd be treated to an evening of the old man behind the box, its rear panel removed, trying for all he was worth to get a halfway-decent picture. We did actually manage to watch the Coronation, with about half our street packed into our living-room.

That piece of junk was bought at great expense from Jolly's Ltd on Witton Lane. They also supplied us with a radiogram, make forgotten, on which the old man played both of his records night after night (those records were EP's by Charlie Kunz, who deserved better). I used the enormous mahogany lid of the radiogram to build wings for my model planes.

Big Gee
 
Oisin:

It's also amazing that people didn't burn their houses down as lighting wiring in houses is to 5 amp maximum, whereas most irons should only be plugged into 13 or, in those days, 15 amp power sockets on the walls - the wiring in their ceilings would have been getting hot and possibly smoking!
 
My old man - who was an electrician and should have known better - used to run any number of applicances off one electricity socket, courtesy of 2- and 3-way adaptors. There was ONE socket in our kitchen, which fed the cooker, the washing-machine, the Flatley clothes-dryer (remember them?), the kettle, mom's iron, the chip-pan and Lord knows how many other things.

Whenever a light-bulb blew, my old man would take it out without switching off, shove his thumb into the holder, and if he got a jolt then he'd announce 'well, the fuse hasn't blown!' His job was installing electric induction furnaces which operated at anything from 2000 volts upwards, so I suppose a dose of household juice at 240 volts didn't bother him...

Big Gee
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top