1930's Cinema Switchgear

[HMV 1120]

Our local cinema in Falmouth (The Pheonix) is still running traditional 35mm projectors and has a wonderful example plinthed and on display. I keep meaning to take a photo for the forum.

[matthewhouse]

There is some fantastic cinema (and other) very old switchgear in many of the photos on the website shown in this thread. I would have loved to have been around to install that sort of thing.

A couple of us had a nose around the old, and sadly falling apart Paignton Picture House, as it was being used as the site office for some recent works. A lot of the wiring and electrical fittings are very old indeed, and notes on a DC mains supply are found in the electric cupboard. I would have liked to have taken some photos but it was just too dark. Fortunately the building is listed. I do hope it gets reopened at some point as it is a lovely building, it would be a shame to just let it, and all the history it holds, just rot away like so many other wonderful buildings.

[thermionic]

Originally Posted by HMV 1120

Our local cinema in Falmouth (The Pheonix) is still running traditional 35mm projectors and has a wonderful example plinthed and on display. I keep meaning to take a photo for the forum.

Hi.

I carried out the electrical installation here. Screens 1 & 4 are digital, the remaining 3 screens are 35mm at present.


SimonT.

[Lucien Nunes]

notes on a DC mains supply are found in the electric cupboard

This sort of ephemeral material is becoming very scarce, often being lost even when the equipment itself is saved. Unlike radios and TVs an electrical installation grows 'organically' within a building and cannot survive outside it without lots of TLC and conservation of supporting information that tells why the wiring was arranged the way it was.

An example from the same period as the cinema in question was a church, where an organ blower with a 5hp single-phase repulsion-start motor had been in use since the late 20s / early 30s. Why single phase? Why 200/400V ? Why did the supply undertaking provide a 400 / 460V autotransformer, found still bolted to the wall in the cupboard and wired up to the mains in 2011? When you see the pencil marks next to the cutouts, the pattern of screwholes in the meter board, the shapes of paint shadows on the wall where the old fuseboards had been, you can start to solve the puzzles. This is one of the reasons I find these few surviving old installations fascinating.

Lucien

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
I love seeing all these old installations too. If only they could talk, eh?
Here's a couple of pics of an old water pump & motor with its starter in Alet les Bains.
A typical French sub station (sadly, these are slowly disappearing now as they're being replaced by "packaged" transformers),
and the Pic du Nore TV mast near Carcassonne.
I know the forum likes pictures
Cheers, Pete

[Nickthedentist]

Loads similar to the one in your 3rd pic in Majorca, now also generally disused, but I note that some have been hacked into with angle grinders recently - copper theft?

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
Possibly, but I hope they don't try that here as all but one that I know of are still live!
Note to self: Must get out and photograph more before they go for good.
Cheers, Pete

[Refugee]

I have been looking into 16mm stuff for the circuit diagram for an old Bell and Howell amplifier.
Is there a gallery some place?

[Brigham]

Has anyone noticed how domestic overhead supply installations are subtly being altered? We have loads of these here in pit villages and the like, and it seems that policy is to bundle the three phases and neutral into a thick lumpy insulated cable, strapped to the existing poles without insulators. Only the individual feeders to each building remain exposed on pots.

I'll try and get some pictures. The process seems to be progressive.

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
It's the same here, a seemingly random mix of insulated cable and separate conductors.
Cheers, Pete

[Ed_Dinning]

Hi Gents, not a totally new innovation, ABC's (aerial bunched conductors) been about for a few years now and are a quicker and cheaper way of re-stringing 440v supplies. They are often supplied with a steel support wire woven into them. I believe connection is via insulation penetrating line taps.
ABC's were also available for 11KV distribution systems.

Ed

[hannahs radios]

I have noticed that they have been using the bunched conductors for about 12 years. They have graduelly replaced the 4 seperate conductors round the Bournemouth area so it seems its a general upgrade with all area boards. I guess they are better because it removes the risk of arcing to wet branches etc

[Brigham]

Hideous, though.

[Welsh Anorak]

Hi
Going back to cinemas, it's often fascinating to look at all the 'repairs' done to the system over the years, often by anyone who could wield a screwdriver, just to get it going again before the paying customers tore up the seats!
Having shown films in the past myself, I realise the art of using two projectors and watching for the 10 and 3 second cue dots died many years ago. Now in most places that still use 35mm all the film is wound onto big pancakes, usually mounted horizontally and going through a tortuous route to the gate. I can't remember the last time a film broke whenm I was watching - and I usually see at least two films a week in the cinema. The last one to go wrong was - guess what? - yes, a digital 3D "film".
Glyn

[McMurdo]

Just scanned 3 pages from 'Theatre and Cinema Installations' by Colin R. Bates, part of the Electrical Wiring and Contracting series of books published in 1930.
A little sad to see included a pic of Tussaud's Cinema which sadly succumbed to the Germans 10 years later.