Oh for a time machine.
 

Whilst ploughing though the massive pile of unscanned documents this one caught my eye.

You used to see these adverts in the magazines but this was in the form of a flyer.

I can provide the scans in JPG files if they are of any interest.

Annoyingly the only A3 scanners I have access to at the moment only scan in PDF or JPG :shrug:

Cheers

Mike T :thumbsup:

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

Look again at the prices though. Those weren't pocket money prices in the mid 60s.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

You could buy such things as brand new R1155s and AR88s, but as Paul says they were still out of reach of most. The hey-day of the government surplus shops with the piles of morse keys and DLR5 headphones.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

I love the old ads in 50's & 60's Wireless World etc. There's one that always makes us chuckle - it's an ad in(possibly) GW Smith or Bull Electrical for an electric clothes drier, and it says it's the ideal gift for 'mother or married sister'. Crikey, the right-on brigade would be going ballistic nowadays!
But I find myself looking at items like large 'RCA plate transformers', which were capable of 2500 volts at up to 1 A, then finding suitable smoothing chokes and caps, all ready for some er...um, action.
We staggered out of G3MAX's shop in Levenshulme with just such an item in 1973. It was about a foot cube and weighed about as much as a small car. A couple of 813's and two 811A's, plus a modulation transformer from MAGTOR in Manchester and you can guess the rest. Guilty, your Honour.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

That's some address. The Headrow is the poshest drag in Leeds centre... and they were just 100 yards uphill from the town hall and library. More CBD than shopping epicentre (That's Meadow Lane or further up the Headrow where you found Lewis' and Schofields)

David

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

Why does everybody now say/write "epicentre" instead of "centre", when they don't even mean the same thing?

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

I always yearned for a few GPO 200 or 300 series Bakelite phones, the going rate for which seemed to be 50p ��

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

I suppose Leeds has its figurative shopping epicentre however many shopping centres it may possess. Can't see how the cannabidiol distribution relates, at least that's the only meaning of CBD that I can find...

Paul

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

I read 'CBD' as 'Central Business District' which would seem to make more sense

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

Popular use of 'epicentre' in this way derives from its use in reports of underground nuclear testing in the 60s. As you say, it doesn't really mean what people think it means today, but that's the way language develops.

Back on topic please.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

Oh for a time machine, indeed. My first job after leaving school in the late 1960s was a trainee engineer with the GPO, as it then was. I remember visiting subscribers' homes with an experienced engineer fault finding on domestic installations. If and old bakelite telephone was faulty, we replaced it with a new coloured 740 or 746 type, much to the customer's delight. The old bakelite ones were dumped in a skip at the back of the telephone exchange.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

A very important principle about Time Machines (taught in the second Time Machine movie) is that you cannot decide to build a time machine to solve a problem that arises, after that problem arises.

The reason is that if the problem is eliminated and never occurs, the time machine will never be built, so you cannot possibly use the machine to solve that problem.

So it is a shame you found all those goodies in that magazine then decided you wanted a time machine after that.

So you better get on an build a time machine now, for no specific application, so it is there later in case you need it for another unexpected task.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

..Why did we complicate things by quoting 55'- or 95'- rather than £2.15.0 or £4.15.0 in those days? Was this intended as a mind trick similar to today's tactics such as £39.99 for a kettle and £8,995 for a car...? Guineas i can cope with, but huge amounts of shillings just seems odd and out of place.

Dave

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

My 'time machine moment' is when I see ads for NOS round tv tubes and pathe clips of 50's second-hand shops selling off all those unwanted 30's tv's.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

Some period pictures of shops full of interesting items sometimes make me wish I could step into them, even just for a few minutes to look round.

Another is being able to go back about 20 years to buy up 1970s-80s TVs from car boot sales & off eBay before prices got silly.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

It was standard practice to price items in the £1-£5 price range like that. It's sales psychology - a pound was a significant psychological barrier at that time, indicating that something was expensive, so people were more willing to buy if the price was in shillings, even a ridiculous quantity like 95/-.

Anything over £1 actually was expensive. A pint of beer in a pub cost less than 2/- in the mid 60s.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

If you analyse the 7/6d for a Hand held mic, a Pint of Beer then (dare I mention Watneys Red Barrel) was about 2/4d, so that's approx three pints for the cost of the Mic, equivalent to about £15 now. After excluding a well known Pub Chain from the equation.

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

Somewhere like this:

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

Oh Richard, you really shouldn't post pics like that. I could stare at it all day, just look at that 60's style!

Re: Oh for a time machine.
 

Epicentre was chosen deliberately. Have you seen the shoppers in Leeds when the sales are on? No quarter is given! Never stand between Yorkshire folk and a bargain.

David