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Other Vintage Household Electrical or Electromechanical Items For discussions about other vintage (over 25 years old) electrical and electromechanical household items. See the sticky thread for details. |
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1st Feb 2019, 7:52 am | #81 | |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
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The one certainty is change. The long-term survival of a company and the people involved in it depends on that company being able to handle, instigate and exploit change. The original Ever Ready management failed to see that the fundamental difference between cannibalising your own product and letting someone else do it was whether you had a chance of still having a company afterwards. Ever Ready's fate was sealed at this point. Hanson were just asset strippers. They bought a company and then did whatever would turn it into the greatest amount of cash, with a preference for cash today over cash tomorrow. I went to the same school that Jimmy Hanson did, and it came as a surprise to find out years later that he was an old boy. Normally schools crow a bit about billionaire head-of-multinationals as ex pupils. This was a school that business owners in the area had long sent their kids to, so maybe a predatory businessman was considered a threat rather than a trophy. In the fifties/sixties, I wanted Ever Ready batteries for my toys. Exide seemed a bit second-best, Ray-O-Vac seemed alien and dodgy. Ming the merciless probably used that brand in his ray gun. I remember getting a small 'Shira' transistor radio for a birthday and it came complete with a 'Flying Bomb' brand battery. Odd name... I was a bit concerned about whether it would explode. The kid next door suggested I listen to it to see if it was ticking... In the sixties, Ever Ready seemed immense and immortal. Here in the 21st century, there is just a little bit of Ever Ready left. Ironically, there is also only just a little bit of Hanson left. You only see the name occasionally on quarrying and cement trucks. Companies seem to do best while steered by their founders, things go to pot when career managers take over, and as for when companies get traded as commodities... run away! As they say about breakfasts, the chicken was involved, but the pig was really committed. David
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1st Feb 2019, 2:55 pm | #82 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
I'm sure there was a radio programme on one saturday afternoon about the rise and fall of Ever Ready, maybe a couple of years ago. The co-op sold Ever Ready but our local shop sold Vidor.
The rise and fall of many large companies who seem to have the world in their lap is a mystery to me. Do we have many truly historic national companies left now who haven't already been broken up, 'de-merged', 'asset-realized' or whatever they call it? In our world, I'm thinking about GEC, EMI, Thorn, Rank etc. We are told that multi-national conglomerates are the modern way, after all.
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1st Feb 2019, 5:09 pm | #83 | |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
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Were Ever Ready Ni-Cads mentioned earlier actually made by them, or were they made by someone like Saft? It seems to be the way that battery technologies are sufficiently specialised and investment-intensive that there aren't that many companies on the planet that get involved with batteries altogether, and different companies specialise in each market sub-division of battery technology- lead-acid gel, lithium, NiMH and so on. |
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1st Feb 2019, 5:38 pm | #84 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
I'm certain that the HP series were carbon-zinc, similar to the U series and the SP series, maybe with higher-purity materials, etched zinc, or maybe zinc chloride mixed with the depolariser to give lower internal resistance and lower self-discharge rate. I used to take them apart for the carbon rods. Alkaline is quite different, and a technology that Ever Ready ignored.
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1st Feb 2019, 5:49 pm | #85 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
Another conglomerate - Owen Green's BTR - bought a big slice of the business a family-member was struggling to keep afloat in the face of Chinese competition (yes, even back in the late-1970s). They paid over-the-odds for it; we were all happy because my relative had no more stress (which was killing her) and she could pay back all the debt she'd taken on trying to keep the thing afloat, and retire with a few millions in the bank.
Businesses rise, businesses fall. (BTR shut the unit down a couple of years later because they couldn't make a go of it either) I don't see a problem with Ever Ready's demise. It had become a 'zombie' company; to me their strategic goof was in the 1950s/early-60s when they continued pushing the 'layer' batteries [PP7/PP9 type things) for UK-designed/manufactured transistor-radios etc when the rest of the world had adopted cylindrical AA/C/D-cells - as the UK radio-manufacturers of radios lost market-share to lower-cost manufacturers in Hong Kong/Japan/China, Ever-Ready's dependence on layer-batteries dragged them down and they were late in adopting the idea of cylindrical-cells-in-a-PP9-case. |
1st Feb 2019, 8:40 pm | #86 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
In answer to post 77. the age of the ever Ready Rechargeable batteries From 1971 is remarkable, I can only say that the insulation between plates must have been more robust than is general, I have found that when Ni Cads were the rule if they were run fairly hard they seemed to go well, I used to have a small electric remote control car and was fairly hungry for batteries the AA Size, I have no theory why some last and in the same batch one goes short circuit,
I have found them to be fickle in this respect. Jeff G0PGY |
2nd Feb 2019, 11:50 am | #87 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
I remember well the day when Hanson paid a visit to Ever Ready's Battery plant at Ely Estate (Edmonton N. London).
I was working in our Radio Service & Repair portacabin and emptying it of all equipment, parts and documents and placing them into boxes, to be sent to Dixons service department, (as they had been given the job of repairing/servicing the 3 Ever Ready Malaysian made transistor radios.) Why? 'coz we'd been given our 'cards' and were to leave by the end of the month ! >(( In fact, it was impossible to ignore the moment the 'Suits' arrived...…...by HELICOPTER !! They landed on a local nearby football pitch, close to the factory, triggering angry shouts from young mothers pushing their babies around the pitch and people walking their dogs. The Hanson 'Boys' got out of the helicopter and walked across the pitch, looking like an out take from "Gunfight At The OK Coral"....two of them even wearing full length leather 'rancher' coats !!!!
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When I die, please don't let my Wife sell my collection for the amount I told her I paid for it! Last edited by camtechman; 2nd Feb 2019 at 12:02 pm. |
2nd Feb 2019, 4:49 pm | #88 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
Ive just bought a pair of Ever Ready pp9's for my Hacker radio, from online.. £9 the pair inc p&p so am happy
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2nd Feb 2019, 5:35 pm | #89 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
Funny how things like Ever ready seem to be eternal but vanish - I don't think I've seen much old equipment that does not name Ever ready battery sizes as the replacement first and other brands later.
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18th Feb 2019, 8:33 pm | #90 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
I've had this Ever Ready "Handylight" since the mid 1960s. I bought it after I saw my grandmother had one.
I was sorting out some paperwork today and found I'd kept the instructions for it. Can you still get the Ever Ready U7 batteries Keith |
18th Feb 2019, 8:50 pm | #91 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
I had one of those. Does the tip of the pre-focus bulb peep out through a little hole in the front? I’m pretty sure I managed to squeeze in a pair of those new-fangled AA cells
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18th Feb 2019, 8:55 pm | #92 | |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
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Ever Ready were rather late to adopt 'standardized' battery-naming. Their U7 became their HP7 some time in the 1960s by which time the rest-of-the-planet had been calling them AA for at least a decade. It always fascinated me as to why Ever Ready produced and promoted such a crazy diversity of batteries - particularly in the early transistor-radio era. Did the likes of the PP6 [sort-of like a quad-sized PP3] or the odd little PP4 - or the bigger lumps like the PP8/PP10/PP11 ever get seriously used in anything outside the UK? |
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18th Feb 2019, 9:22 pm | #93 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
The PP8 was used in electric fences.
Another old type was the HP1 a large 12 volt disposable battery. Used in the first dry battery powered fluorescent hand lamp. There was, and may still be, one these lamps and an HP1 on display at the science museum, London. |
18th Feb 2019, 10:02 pm | #94 | |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
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18th Feb 2019, 10:15 pm | #95 | |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
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Wasn't the Ever Ready 3 volt "penlight" battery actually two AA-size cells in series?
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Phil Optimist [n]: One who is not in possession of the full facts Last edited by Phil G4SPZ; 18th Feb 2019 at 10:19 pm. Reason: Addendum |
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18th Feb 2019, 10:59 pm | #96 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
I was born in 1970 and the nomenclature of AAA/AA/C/D was HP16/HP7/HP11/HP2 for some bizarre reason. (All orange, zinc chloride) The cheaper zinc carbons were available in SP11 and SP2 (blue, previously having been mainly white) but i don't recall SP16 or SP7- if they did exist our local shops certainly didn't stock them.
There was a blue 3v battery the diameter of a permanent marker, but slightly shorter. I can't remember anything that it would have fitted. My Mother worked at the Ever Ready factory and says she lost some mid-range hearing as a result. A big price to pay for not being told to wear defenders. Dave |
19th Feb 2019, 12:29 am | #97 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
Here's an old 15V EverReady battery I recovered from an old camera flash. It still has the seller's label and price on it. Might have been quite expensive in those days.
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19th Feb 2019, 12:32 am | #98 |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
Dave, would that have been the factory in Park Lane, Wolverhampton, by any chance?
Phil
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19th Feb 2019, 6:00 am | #99 | |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
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Of course that battery consisted of 2 cells fitted in a tube. The individual cells were not common in the UK, but a friend of mine has a piece of German test gear (I forget what) that takes 3 such cells side-by-side (giving 4.5V). So I guess they were available in Germany at one time. |
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19th Feb 2019, 8:32 am | #100 | |
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Re: Is Ever Ready still a part of your life?
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