Flash From The Past

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Living in post war London we had a local power station supplying DC power for the area that subsequently became the universal AC sometime in the 1950s.
The conversion process for radios tended to shorten their lifespan considerably!

Double pole multiple way adapters that could be plugged into a lampholder to supply whatever you wanted until you blew the (wire) fuse and all the lights went out.

Dustmen carrying full size galvanised bins on their backs and tipping them over their heads into the side loading lorry.

Rag and bone men going along the street shouting ragbone sitting on a cart pulled by a horse.

Harrods battery electric delivery vans.

heavy industrial factories tucked away in odd parts of London.

[Speedy Builder5]

On Speedy Builder5 Said:

Visit to the dentist – treadle drilling machine, silver paper reflector inside the angle poise lamp, bottle of Detol to clean the dental probes and a metalled spirit flame to make sure the microbes were dead!!

And the gas mask to knock you out

H

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, the star grading started on the 17th March 1967 in the UK.

Regards Nick.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Jumping on and off the platform of a moving double decker bus.

Loads of grandad age men who had fought in WW1 and uncles who had fought in WW2.

Real hotels just like Fawlty Towers!

Cooks who believed vegetables had to be boiled for a few hours so that most British homes smelt of cabbage-farts.

Pubs with lino, sawdust, and spittoons.  (No food except for the odd advanced establishment with ancient curly sandwiches stored under a fly-blown glass dome.)

Beautiful red telephone boxes used by drunks as a toilet.

Early closing day.

National Anthem played in Cinemas.

Thick clouds of cigarette smoke pouring out of Tube trains when the doors opened.

The joys of multi-radix arithmetic when paying for anything.   (If an ounce of shag costs 1s 7½d, and you buy 3oz, how much change from a five pound note?)

Having to crawl under cars with a grease gun.

Rusty cars with silencers that didn’t last and brake fade.

Two channels of 405-line television.  One channel (BBC) for posh people, the other (ITV) for oiks.

Pirate radio stations

1970’s fashion – crotch hugging loon pants, caftans, sideburns, budgie bells and psychedelia.    DIY ‘improvements’  such as modernising nice panel doors by nailing hardboard over them, painting the house orange, and putting up this print:

 

Boys with nascent moustaches wearing school uniform with cap, blazer, and shorts.

Everyone smoking like a chimney, including doctors.

Retired colonels, who all lived in Cheltenham, writing to the papers demanding that all social ills be cured by National Service, long prison sentences (bread and water plus hard labour), the Birch, and hanging.

Parents who disapproved of their drug taking children themselves going to bed with a couple of sleeping tablets and a whiskey nightcap.

Bowler hats and tightly furled umbrellas that were never opened.

Party lines.

Chilblains…

🙂

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

[JAParticipant @ja]

This posting seems to have returned to its starting point: Accumulators for valve radios to valves themselves. Does anyone remember the 807? I see you can still buy new ones on the internet! The barber recharged accumulators for the local farmers.

For my farthing’s worth: Ascot hot water boilers, the cast iron equivalent of the combi boiler. As a kid they frightened me. Trolley buses, I was on one that tried to overtake another in the rush hour, what fun.

JA

If National Service had not been abolished would we have had the Beatles?

[editted after the daily drop-out from broadband]

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

The ‘white’ spot on the TV screen when turned off, the test card and the intermission.

H

[dodmoleParticipant @dodmole]

Well remember taking the discharged glass accumulator down to the local garage for swapping to a charged one and wondering why the fully charged one was not any heavier.

Also remember fitting it in place beside the slab of cells for the valves HT.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Their old brewery site is only 3 miles from me

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Don’t forget the old gas and oil lamp mantles are radioactive. They contain Thorium. Avoid breathing the dust if dealing with a broken one. I’ts not going to kill you instantly aor give you superpowers but any ingestion / inhallation of radioactive material is best avoided where possible.

Robert.

[Robert Atkinson 2]

On Robert Atkinson 2 Said:

Don’t forget the old gas and oil lamp mantles are radioactive. They contain Thorium. Avoid breathing the dust if dealing with a broken one. I’ts not going to kill you instantly aor give you superpowers but any ingestion / inhallation of radioactive material is best avoided where possible.

Robert.

Nothing to do with this topic. Some Magnesium alloys contain Thorium. Don’t set fire to any old piece of Magnesium for the hell of it.

JA

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

..putting your leg into the boot of invalid carriages to kick-start the Villiers engine for the poor stranded occupant..

..When the rural population would wear their very best clothes and a hat and/or tie to go to town on Market Day.

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

The circus arriving at the station then parading through town centre then through local park to the sight of the big top

H

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

I remember the trolley buses in Bradford (just). Their hill climbing was sooo much better than diesel buses, but when some idiot parked inconsiderately the trolley arms used to come adrift, and everything stopped. They still have trolleys in San Francisco, as well as trams, deep level tube and cable cars. In this country we seem incapable of maintaining any infrastructure that requires capital. Leeds had a fabulous tram system, a lot of it on reserved track. As a child I must have driven my mother mad by insisting on travelling by tram, the nearest stop was about a mile from home, much further than the bus. In winter sit lower deck near the stairs, that’s where the power control resistors were. All gone now,it was cheaper to buy buses than replace the worn out trams.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Being given a Goldfish in a jam-jar, by the ‘Rag & Bone Man’ … in payment for something my Dad had left out for him.

[ causing the family unanticipated expense and inconvenience, of course ! ]

MichaelG.

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

” the trolley buses in Bradford ”

Sunbridge road, right at Barry street (THE HILL) and left onto Westgate. Part of main Trolley bus route from town centre to terminus at BRI.

Water agitator locally called a ‘Posser’ used one regularly (Great Fun) on Monday – wash day at me Grandmothers. Same day, trip to ‘Uddersfield Market.

3D6 (octal base) valves in R/C Transmitter, 1.5V Lt, 120V Ht.

Watching QE II Coronation on ‘Viewmaster’ home constructed TV (Dad built) with rubber Shadowmask surround on 12″dia ‘Tube’. This is where the diagonal dimension on TVs originated. Saw one home construct that used exMinistry tube, GREEN and black pictures.  Dad converted this with a ‘Cyldon’ tuner for ITA broadcasts. Screen burst into life with advert for Rowntrees fruit gums (Yum Yum Yum, five fruity flavours in your Tum Tum Tum.)

Nife (Sallis) cells and DKZ Deacs.

Regards  Ian.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Viuewmaster, now that really does bring back memories of the problems that we had with ours!

An old Cossor radio powered by an accumulator, and a HT battery eliminator, which charged the accumulator whenn the set was off.

Replaced by an all mains Vidor radio, with flywheel tuning!

Swinging the starting handle to start the car when the 6 volt battery ran out of power!

Howard

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

NiFe Cells….

Ah, what in music is called a ‘recapitulation’.

It is an acronym for rechargeable Nickel-Iron couple, alkaline electrolyte cells, which along with lead-acid equivalents were once standard in mining, and used (often second-hand) by cavers until around the 1980s.

The battery was a heavy, bulky lump worn on a belt, but they became obsolete in that hobby because they could leak electrolyte dangerous not only to the user by skin burns, but also potentially lethally by corroding the plastics-fibre ropes and harnesses starting to be used in caving.

What replaced them? Acetylene lamps, for a decade or so!

A strange historical loop, for the alternative in times past to Nife and “Oldham”  lead-acid lighting had been small self-contained acetylene lamps clipped to the helmet. These were also used in non-gaseous mines.

The modern form used a larger capacity, belt-carried generator connected by flexible tube to a burner on the front of the helmet. I think mine is now in Wells Museum.

Anyone who has seen the caterpillar-tracked, (Ruston?) traction-engine built I think in 4″ (6″ ?), scale by Steve Baldock but now owned elsewhere, will have noticed its acetylene lighting true to its unique prototype. He made an acetylene generator casing matching the original in form and scale, but the functional part is one of these modern caving acetylene units, hidden within.

And now? Almost universally, cavers now use small l.e.d based lamps worn entirely helmet-mounted.

……

Trolley Buses…

I have never ridden in one but recall seeing them still being used in Bournemouth in the early-1960s. I think Bournemouth Corporation (another piece of nostalgia in that alone!) was the last in Britain to use them.

…..

Fruit Gums?

Oh, I liked them! And Fruit Salad, sold loose by 4oz units.

Remember ‘Dolly Mixtures’ too? I’ve had that many vaccinations and blood-tests in the last few years I reckon the NHS owes me one of those big, screw-top, sweet-jars full of those tiny fondants and jellies.

….

Compound Multiplication…

What is the cost of a bunker-full of Welsh Steam Coal at so-many £.s.d per ton?

With some thought, I could still answer a Compound Multiplication question typical in the topic within the Arithmetic (not “Mathematics”!) we learnt, well, were taught, in Junior School. The same school introduced me, probably extra-syllabus, to:

Logarithm Tables….

Yes, I can still use them and my Slide-Rule, with a bit of revision!

Besides, the latter two or three decades of work meant understanding logarithms, not for times-sums but as the foundation of the deciBel scale. One of my superiors told me many work-experience students found dBs baffling because schools no longer teach logarithms. Worse, one was unable to perform what should have been fairly easy for him, a real-life calculation from equipment tests, because he’d never been taught Trigonometry!

….

Not objects but attitudes – positive ones expressed by what some may recall, The Junior Weekend Book.

I still have my copy of this 1950s compendium of all sorts of magical things to read, sing, collect, do or make; and it was aimed at children from perhaps 7 upwards without at all patronising them. Indeed, its general intellectual and vocabulary level is quite grown-up.

Some of the poems and novel extracts had not been written for children anyway – I think I remember asking Dad what that strange phrase “b****y crate” meant, in a D.H. Lawrence poem about a pioneering Britain to Australia plane flight. From sheer memory one of the aviators says, “We’ll fly this b****y crate until it falls to bits at our feet”: I won’t spoil the ending for those yet to read it. The novel extracts avoided those by D.H.L., though… There are limits!

While the book’s toffee recipes do not tell you to ask Mum to simmer and stir the butter and syrup liquid for you. And another chapter assumes Dad will lend you his woodworking tools and supply the wood etc., so you, Dear Reader, can build a couple of real but basic boats so you can happily play Swallows and Amazons. Nor does Mum sew for you the simple tent for your adventures.

At least you won’t scald yourself or come home soaked from the un-plimmed boat sinking under you, by trying its puzzles. Some of those are hard enough to make most adults think for several minutes.

 

 

 

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Chemistry sets that had contents and instructions for making interesting and sometimes dangerous things to scare the family with.

[JAParticipant @ja]

Slide rules, a thing of the past? I found mine about half a year ago and remembered how to use it. Far quicker to use than a modern calculator (keying in numbers and giving an answer to an absurd number of significant figures). It is sitting beside my laptop at this moment.

A bit like Morse code, I suppose.

JA

[Mike HurleyParticipant @mikehurley60381]

There’s still one copy of ‘the Junior weekend ‘ book on Amazon for £8 if anyone else is interested.

[Bill DawesParticipant @billdawes]

Yes all bring back memories for me, I’m 82 now so my childhood that I can remember goes back to the 40s.

The great winter of 47 was the year I started school, it didn’t shut down by the way.

Those 1/3 pint bottles of milk all lined up on the hot water pipes as they had an ‘ice lolly’ poking out the top.

My nan had no electricity in her house (opposite the Tyseley engine shed in Brum.) I used to take her accumulator up the road to exchange for a charged one, likewise with those fragile gas mantles.

My nans house in Tysleley backed on to the Klaxon horn factory and I remember being fascinated as they erected a new steel chimney.

I can still smell the mixture of Smiths crisps and suds oil from all the factories from the workers at the bus stop. On the way up there was a huge hoarding and I used to stop and gaze in awe at the man up the ladder with a large brush, paste bucket and satchel deftly pasting on sections of a new advert, usually the latest edition of ‘My goodness, my Guiness’

Seeing policemen walking the streets, after shop hours checking doors were locked, servicemen in uniform, particularly the rolling gait of a navy man with his bell bottom trousers.

Seeing the bike testers from the BSA, half a mile down the road where I lived with mom and dad.

The testers had large leather coats, goggles, no helmet. And similarly clad drivers of bare chassis trucks with trade plates from the Morris Commercial works a few miles away, the smell of hot paint as they went past.

The thrill of seeing the first post war car designs on my way to school, like the Vauxhall Cresta, Ford Zephyr, they looked so wide and low compared to the pre war sit up and beg designs.

The men running out into the road to get to the horse ‘manure’ from the milk/coal cart.

The pop pop engine sounds of Bantam from BSA and James motor cycles just round the corner., round the corner from them was Watsonian side cars. On the way to school I used to guess what the car or motor bike coming up behind me was, the Morris minor of course was distinctive as was the Sunbeam shaft driven motor bike.

The fascination of seeing those pull wire cash transportation gadgets from counter to cash desk at our local Co-Op.

The sound of all the train whistles on new years eve.

And yes clearly remember petrol at 3/6d a gallon when I had my first car, a 1946 Austin 8, 3 gallons and three shots (Redex) was the order of the day. My local Co-Op garage started giving away tokens with which I got table mats, the were plastic covered with picures of old cars like Panhard, De Dion Bouton and so on, I still have them and they are in pretty near perfect condition still after many years of usage.

I live in rural Somerset now but living in the big city as a boy then was very exciting.

Bill D.

[Daniel MackayParticipant @danielmackay21455]

My Mum & Dad had an accumulator the same as that one for our trusty old Cossar radio, They also had another glass accumulator which had a neat little voltmeter built into it to show how much current was still in the accumulator, & was it time for the weary trudge down to the accumulator man for a swap for your parents other accumulator which he had charged and was sitting waiting on a shelf  I remember also another little battery for another part of the radios electronic wizardy, Called a grid bias, Happy days, provided you did not lick your fingers after handling the accumulators, other wise you got a horrible acid taste!

[Perko7Participant @perko7]

Dad trying to buy the special circular wick for our kerosene heater when I was a kid. Ours did not have the piezo or battery-powered igniter, just lit with a match, but it did the job for our Brisbane Australia winters.

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

Last used Log tables assisting design of exhaust system on Class 465 Locos. Tech Director came to me with a doo everything electronic ‘Texas’ whizz bang with ‘Have you seen this?’

Yep, but the battery NEVER runs out on this! (Logarithms for skools)

Surprising how many of US old farts remember so much from three quarters of a Century ago? What price the burger flippers and ‘Political Commentaters’ (Spullin correkt)

Regards  Ian.

[JAParticipant @ja]

Ordinary postage stamp cost two and a half pence (old money). How times have changed.

JA

[Author]

Posts