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Old 19th Jan 2012, 1:12 am   #58
emeritus
Dekatron
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Brentwood, Essex, UK.
Posts: 5,316
Default Re: Another unusual plug and some other questions

The comparison with gas sounds plausible on the face of it, but from a consideration of the catalogue as a whole I'm pretty sure that "lights" must be a typo.

The same tabulated presentation of current ratings by ranges, the lowest rating being 1-5, is used throughout the catalogue, and all the others refer to "Amps". In particular, note that the sockets were fused ["with cutout" ], and the corresponding replacement fuse links are rated in Amps.

There is another reason why "Lights" is unlikely to refer to how many lamps could be run from a socket. In 1893 Edison's patent was still in force [but due to expire on 10th November], and while only lamps manufactured by the Edison- Swan company were available on the home market, the 16CP 100V lamp that was said to be the type most widely used, was said to draw a current of anything between .4 to .7 Amperes at 100V, making the [16CP] "light" an unsatisfactory way of expressing current rating. In any event the preamble to the "Concentric" page suggests that wall plugs were intended for connecting the many small portable electrical appliances that were avaialble.

As there seems to be some interest in this, I will post a few more pages which illustrate some of the fittings and appliances of 1893.
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