TV's etc run off light fittings.

[colly0410]

I was talking to an old school friend the other day, we nattered about how when we lived in the Meadows area of Nottingham (in the 60's not a posh area) that some of our houses did not have power sockets in the living rooms. I've seen people (my relatives included) running a TV, radio, iron, hoover & fairy lights off a light socket with an adaptor (not all at the same time, but I wouldn't have put it past them) & the TV & radio live chassis as well. As Hilda Baker would have said "we could have all been electroplated." How the area did not go up in flames I'll never know..

[Heatercathodeshort]

The lighting circuit could handle about 800 watts without a disaster. Nothing was earthed but care was taken. We are having 'the electric light' installed must have been a common saying in the 20's.

Radio together with the electric iron were the first electric items to enter the home and all were plugged into the light via a switched 'double adaptor.' The flex was usually strung from the lampholder to a screw hook on the picture rail. It then trailed down to the radio in the corner of the room.
Many television receivers were powered this way, sometimes a little neater with a 5 amp 2 pin plug and socket. You still had to turn the light on to power the radio as Auntie Vera has done with her bathroom heater. I condemned her actions years ago but she insists it's safe. She insists her brother PAT has tested it. She is 99 so who am I to argue?

I give up..Regards, John.

[paulsherwin]

When older houses were electrified before WWII it was seen as a replacement for gas lighting rather than as a general utility with multiple uses. It was completely normal for only a lighting circuit to be installed upstairs, though there would usually be a single power socket fitted in the living room. Irons and electric blankets were routinely plugged into the light socket, as were sewing machines.

These houses only received proper power circuit ring mains during the 'great rewiring' of the 1960s.

That bathroom heater looks absolutely lethal John. I hope she doesn't have a bath with it turned on!

[ITAM805]

In the 60's, although all the houses in the street had wall sockets (brown ones fitted to the skirting board) I remember my mate's Mum across the road having an iron, and of course a bare light bulb plugged into the living room light socket. It had a pull cord on it as it was dangling off of the dust covered flex as it was too high to reach. She must have stood on a chair to plug the iron in!

They also had fully 'loaded' fly papers which I think had been in place since the mid 50's

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
That photo in post 2 reminds me of watching a James Bond film on TV as a young kid. In one scene the baddie is being chased by Mr Bond and falls into a full bath, whereupon our hero grabs a nearby electric bowl heater and chucks into said bath thus killing the bad guy. I was so upset by that and was inconsolable. As a result I have detested Bond films ever since!
Our bathroom was so cold that my parents used an ancient Berry Magicoal in there which was plugged into the bedroom wall socket. But I was very scared of it.
Cheers, Pete

[threeseven]

In the early 70's we lived in Whitley Bay for a couple of years.

My parents decided they wanted to 'do' the kitchen and I volunteered to help with the electrics, I managed to convince my father that I had adequate knowledge to do the job, even though I was still at school!

That's until we discovered the wiring was still lead sheathed cable! The round pin sockets should have alerted us to the primitive state of the installation.

They couldn't afford a total rewire so I rewired the kitchen and left the tails for the lighting and ring main for an electrician to connect up to the 'fuse box'. He inspected my work and announced that he was quite impressed. I can't recall the details now but he persuaded my father to have a 3 way MCB consumer unit installed so the kitchen was safely covered for ring main, lights and cooker point.
It all worked ok until we moved about 2 years later but my father made the new owners fully aware of the work on the electrics. I also recall using the lighting pendant in my bedroom for 'extra' items due to only having one socket!

[turretslug]

Originally Posted by Tractorfan

That photo in post 2 reminds me of watching a James Bond film on TV as a young kid. In one scene the baddie is being chased by mr. Bond and falls into a full bath, whereupon our hero grabs a nearby electric bowl heater and chucks into said bath thus killing the bad guy. I was so upset by that and was inconsolable. As a result I have detested Bond films ever since!
Our bathroom was so cold that my parents used an ancient Berry Magicoal in there which was plugged into the bedroom wall socket. But I was very scared of it.

I remember that, too-sounds like a Bond movie was a far more effective way of conveying the H+S message than a Public Information film! ,

Colin.

[Lucien Nunes]

I hope Auntie Vera has RCD protection. If she does, the risk of electrocution is perhaps slightly lower than it looks. If she does not, I would be tempted to sneak some in, or at least make the bowl fire element 'fail' one day so that it has to be replaced with something else.

One interesting difference between the bayonet lamp cap and the Edison screw is the practical continuous current rating when used as a general purpose connector. An E27 adaptor in a well engineered holder will carry ten amps with ease, which would destroy the springs in ordinary BC contact pins in seconds. It is difficult to devise a worse kind of connector from an electrical standpoint - not polarised, not touch proof, has three contact surfaces in series in each pole two of which involve a poor conductor - plus it is mechanically weak and incapable of withstanding the plug being accidentally pulled out by the cable.

At least for its intended purpose it is arguably better than ES because it doesn't loosen with thermal cycling.

[G6Tanuki]

For a brief period in my student-days I lived in a small hall-of-residence that was actually an old seafront hotel which had been condemned as unfit for hotel-duty but still OK for students to live in.
There were various student bands who sought somewhere to practice and the only place that was sufficiently soundproof was the basement. Which was lit by a single incandescent bulb dangling from the ceiling on a bit of cotton/rubber-covered 'figure-of-8' flex.

Of course students being students they soon replaced this lightbulb with a 3-way BC adaptor and hooked up their various guitar- and vocals-amps as well as the bulb: I reckon they were probably drawing about a Kilowatt in total.

Lacking any kind of earth, and coupled with the damp, stone-floored basement they got major hum-issues and occasional non-fatal but still 'interesting' electric-shocks: the vocalist learned not to touch his lips on the metal mic-screen.

[My role in all this was as designer/builder of indestructible amplifiers using 807s and KT88s because I didn't trust the lots-of-OC35s-in-push-pull-parallel approach to be able to survive the abuse]

[julie_m]

Lighting circuits would normally have a 5 amp wire fuse for a rating of 1.2 kW. In more recent times, a 5 amp barrel fuse or a 6 amp MCB. This is completely overkill nowadays -- there is less than 300 watts of lighting in total in my 2-up, 2-down terrace. And that includes two 36 W tubes in the loft and two 40W filament bulbs, one in the understairs cupboard (an obvious candidate for LED replacement) and one in a bedside lamp with a dimmer (although that is actually plugged into the ring main).

[Lucien Nunes]

I remember somewhere - maybe a hall of residence or some rented accommodation where some friends were living - that had both the lighting circuit and the 2A socket outlets provided, fused right down to an amp or two to prevent them being used for heating appliances. It was generally understood that connecting a hairdryer or similar to the lighting circuit would leave you in darkness.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Lucien Nunes

I remember somewhere - maybe a hall of residence or some rented accommodation where some friends were living - that had both the lighting circuit and the 2A socket outlets provided, fused right down to an amp or two to prevent them being used for heating appliances. It was generally understood that connecting a hairdryer or similar to the lighting circuit would leave you in darkness.

The 'repurposed hotel' hall I mentioned above had this: however there were 15-amp round-pin sockets in some of the rooms and the corridors. There were also "Gyp rooms" on each floor, provided with enough power to run electric cookers/toasters/kettles - usually a 30A circuit for each Gyp-room.

Let's just say some of us had a truly creative disregard of electrical regulations, and learned the hard way that ex-army "Don.10" telephone cable was not suitable for making extension-leads to power kettles.

[Colourstar]

I've got one of those adaptors with an extra socket at the side and a pull-switch.

It always seems wrong to me that the switch operates on the 'lamp' socket, not the angled one at the side. Surely you'd want the light on all the time and the appliance switched? You could of course put the bulb in the side socket but that just looks plain odd and precludes the use of a lampshade.

Steve

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by Colourstar

It always seems wrong to me that the switch operates on the 'lamp' socket, not the angled one at the side. Surely you'd want the light on all the time and the appliance switched?

Not if you were using it in daylight. Most appliances would have their own power switches, but generally not irons which would need to be unplugged (and which you weren't supposed to use in a lighting socket anyway, even back then).

[Herald1360]

I'd have thought it was quite logical to have the light switched- that way you could iron or listen to the radio during daylight hours without wasting any leccy!

There were definitely only 2A sockets in the halls at Leicester Uni when my son was there in the '90s- presumably as suggested to discourage independent (free to user but not to uni) heating setups.

I made up the oddest disboard of my career for his "hifi"- a 2A plug feeding a 4-way 13A socket board via a switch fuse fitted with a 2A instead of 13A fuse.

My own uni experience was less cheeseparing- the halls had normal 13A sockets throughout. The most interesting electrical problem then was the rolling powercuts during the three day week saga- some of the students' lighting setups were quite inventive (it was a college of science and technology).

[reelguy]

I remember the adapter with the iron and a bulb on at the same time.
We had a white porcelain light shade above the adapter and the wiring was cloth covered flex. When my mother did the ironing the light used to swing about as she moved the iron up and down the table. I don't remember anything happening because of this though.
Sometime in the 50s I think... I was only a lad at the time.
I think I still have an old type adapter somewhere. Not in use ...

Peter W......Reelguy

[Fezziwig]

I remember irons plugged in light sockets. Then there was round pin 5 amp wall sockets and heavier duty 15 amp sockets. We were tough then. We didn't flinch at getting a good belt of 240 Volts. We would just laugh and carry on.

[Jonster]

The 'halls of residence' (well the ones in H block at any rate) at the BBC training centre at Wood Norton near Evesham were similarly bereft of 13A power sockets back in the early 80s, a 13A four way block to bayonet plug adaptor to plug into the desk lamp fitting was standard practice!

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

When older houses were electrified before WWII it was seen as a replacement for gas lighting rather than as a general utility with multiple uses.

That bathroom heater looks absolutely lethal John.

When I was a child, I well recall my mother referring to the 'electric light bill' in the 1960s. She was still using that term up to the point when she passed away last year - aged 96 years.

And, in the 1960s, we also had an electric 'bar fire heater' - exactly as per that photo. - and it was used to heat the bathroom. Mind you, my parents were savvy enough to switch it off and remove it from the bathroom before anyone took a bath! The spacing of the metal 'guard' was such that you could insert your fingers through the 'guard' and touch the element without any difficulty at all . . . not that I ever tried to!

Al. / Sept. 18, 2013 //

[petertheorgan]

When I was at boarding School in the 1970s the studies were also equipped only with 2 amp 3 pin sockets and I did a roaring trade in connecting 2 amp plugs onto 4 way 13 amp outlets , ( I was also known to "beef up" the fuse wire so the electric kettle or toaster could be plugged in - not sure how we did not set the place alight .

On a similar note , I have an old friend who was a BR signalman in the old days when " proper " signalboxes existed and these rarely had power sockets but they all seemed to have a desk lamp over the train register desk fitted with a traditional light bulb , every signalman I knew had a length of flex with a bayonet adapter on one end and a 13amp trailing socket on the other to plug in their radio or music machine ( or toaster !)