Electrotherapy machine

[Jason Pero]

That crank handle reminds me of the gramophone crank. Look in this direction if you can locate suitable one.

Cheers, Wizard

[Dave Moll]

I'm sure that Jeffrey will correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks as though a "female" crank is needed to go on the end of the shaft, whereas my experience of gramophone cranks is that they are "male".

[dseymo1]

As an aside, does anyone know why magnets were always traditionally painted red?
If the answer is at all involved, I suppose we should start a new thread.

[Big Band Heaven]

Our physics teacher had one of these in his lab. THis was in 1984 and he got one of us children to hold the two electrodes whilst he cranked it up! Not sure if that would be allowed these days. It certainly made the person holding them jump! He also had one of those maci8nes which had two upright poles which got wider apart as they went up. When fired up a spark used to arc accross from one to the other. Bet that caused quite a bit of local interference!!

[paolo]

As a child in the 70's I had an Electric Experimenter kit. I now can't remember who made it nor what it did, apart from the fact that it contained an electrotherapy (ie, electric shock) kit.

Consisting of a coil and two metal tubes and powered by (I think) a 9v battery, I used to have no end of fun getting people to hold the tubes while I nonchalantly upped the volts. Oddly, people were disinclined to volunteer more than once

Would definitely not get past the Health and Safety police now, of course, but provided hours of fun for me as a 7 year old

Paul

[slderiron]

You may need to get the magnet re-magnetised, they usually go very weak after 100 years. Not sure how this is done but I think there's firms out there that do this.

[emeritus]

The GEC catalogue of 1893 has a section on "Electromedical Supplies". Battery-operated shocking coils are called "Medical Coils", but the hand-operated equivalents are called "Magneto Electro-Medical Machines".

They occupy only one page, copy attached, and illustrate machines similar to those shown in this thread.

While clearly not authentic, if you just want something to make your machine work, RS do a range of polyurethane belt cord in red and green in a range of diameters that can be cut to length and welded using a hot knife or the like to produce smooth endless belts of any size. I use the barrel of an elderly Henley Solon soldering iron to heat both ends simultaneosly and then push them together.

[techiesteve]

Originally Posted by paolo

As a child in the 70's I had an Electric Experimenter kit. I now can't remember who made it nor what it did, apart from the fact that it contained an electrotherapy (ie, electric shock) kit.
Paul

A school friend had something similar given to him as a birthday present in the early 1960's, can't remember much about it other than the 2 chrome tubular handles. Later, we made something similar, with a battery, buzzer and valve output transformer, it gave one hell of a kick.

Most interesting reading about the original devices.

[evingar]

Nice unit
I note it says in the lid "for nervous disuses" - Certainly an elegant way to obtain a "nervous disease" - should you be in the market for one.

[Herald1360]

Originally Posted by techiesteve

A school friend had something similar given to him as a birthday present in the early 1960's, can't remember much about it other than the 2 chrome tubular handles. Later, we made something similar, with a battery, buzzer and valve output transformer, it gave one hell of a kick.

Most interesting reading about the original devices.

Might have been ESL. ISTR that was the logo on the green tube over the coil in the shock machine in mine....

I think the set was designed around using the 41/2 V Bell battery with screw terminals, but it all worked much "better" (once you replaced the torch bulbs ) from a 6V lantern battery

[emeritus]

Here's a better quality scan of the 1893 catalogue.