Those were the days

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

I have some alternative theories for the downward trend in electrical fatalities.. either folk too obese/lazy to plug/unplug any appliance or simply an evolutionary trend culling the electricity-danger ignorant – perhaps a trend worth encouraging.

I recall an australian neurosurgeon once pointing out that car accidents and head injuries lead to swelling of the brain and compression injury within the skull. He suggested a spike be fitted above the drivers head so they would experience an instant craniotomy on impact to reduce the secondary damage. I always felt that driving about with a large spike pointing at ones head would indeed lead to more cautious motoring.

We all need protection from the 'brainf@rt' injury – that moment of inattention – but total mollycoddleing will lead to greater recklessness on the assumption everything is safe.

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Posted by robjon44 on 03/08/2017 09:00:14:

My building buddys father worked in the workshop of the local electricity board so we had 2 volt glass accumulators the size of a building brick that we used to start our glo plug engines, his dad taking them to work to charge them, none of them nancy boy Lithium Ion rechargeables in them days matey! I have long held the view that it is possible to die of nostalgia, but then I haven't got over Johnny Kidd & the Pirates yet,

Cheers

I had a Great Aunt that used those to run her radio back in 1960 as electicity had not got any nearer to her house than the main road at the end of her lane. There was a house there that charged them for her.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Without wanting to start an argument.

My post expressed the facts, as available to me, but no hard feelings, I hope.

Injuries, per capita, should decline as we learn from our mistakes and those of others, and the developments in equipment. Witness my comment re exposed live components in the motor. Obviously, I would prefer them to have been shielded from any accidental or even deliberate contact with sentient life, or anything else!

Howard

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

My father was no good at mending things. When he tried to repair the iron for mother he played safe and got her to test it.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

After my posting on this thread yesterday I was instructed by higher authority to change over two light fittings before the decorator arrived today, the fittings were one in an upstairs bedroom and the other on the upstairs landing. Well I switched off the power at the DB and removed both fittings and fitted said fitting on the landing, switched on the power, check all ok the light was working. Moved to the bedroom and made ready to fit the other light fitting, pulled down the wires from within the ceiling, wallop got an almighty belt and memory dawned had forgotten to go downstairs to isolate the power after checking the landing light. Unfortunately no RCD on the light circuit so my little belt managed to blow a 5 amp fuse and trip a 5 amp circuit breaker, so lucky no permanent damage except to my pride. Must remember to engage brain and common sense in future.

Dave

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Experience is what allows you to spot the mistake,m the next time that you make it.

A colleague who came to electronics via commercial electrical installations told me" When you pull a fuse to isolate a circuit, put it in your pocket, so that no one can replace it when your back is turned" he'd learned that the hard way.

Now, with MCBs you are less able to do that, so is progress safer in all respects?

Howard

[RobboParticipant @robbo]

Posted by Watford on 01/08/2017 12:20:21:

Remember seeing mother ironing on the kitchen table with the flex plugged into one of those two-way adaptors that was itself plugged into the light socket. All swinging about on some ropey silk-covered twisted twin.

Mike

Common practice post-WW2. You could get a 3-way adapter to plug into the light, and it even had switching by a pull cord. In our house at the time we only had a lighting circuit, all cooking being done on a coal fired cast iron range. Hot water for bathing was produced in a cast iron copper, again coal fired. Needless to say, having a bath needed to be planned well ahead.

Listening to a 50 year old recording of "Educating Archie" (a radio comedy show which involved a ventriloquist, Peter Brough, and Archie was the dummy) on the radio the other day, the characters were going to do some ironing, so one climbed onto the kitchen table to plug in the iron to the ceiling light socket.

Edited By Robbo on 03/08/2017 15:56:40

[OldMetallerParticipant @oldmetaller]

When I bought my 1960's house it was rather run down and there were some jobs I needed to do immediately. One of them was to remove the doorbell, which was extremely loud as the previous owner of the house was very old and hard of hearing. I started unscrewing the push button on the the door jamb and there was a bang and a flash and all the lights went out. Yes, it was a mains-powered doorbell. My mistake was to assume that it would be low-voltage and/or battery-powered.

I wasn't hurt, but it reminded me not to make assumptions, and as a priority, I had the old fusebox professionally replaced with a modern RCD unit.

Regards,

John.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

OldMetaller glad to see I am not the only who has problems with mains electric kerb.

Dave

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

One of them was to remove the doorbell, which was extremely loud as the previous owner of the house was very old and hard of hearing. I started unscrewing the push button on the the door jamb and there was a bang etc

A handy modern gizmo for non leccy people is an electric field detector, places like Lidl and TKmax have them in stock from time to time for around a tenner

Point it at a wire or appliance and the LED lights up if the target has a live wire present, you don't need it to touch any exposed wires to work, (this blue one for instance tells you if 100 to 250v is present)

Mine told me all my old storage heating sockets are still live (the heaters are long gone)

Also handy for finding a broken connection point in a cable, the detector light goes out at the break

Edited By Ady1 on 04/08/2017 09:42:52

[MeunierParticipant @meunier]

Posted by Dave Halford on 03/08/2017 13:53:49:

I had a Great Aunt that used those to run her radio back in 1960 as electicity had not got any nearer to her house than the main road at the end of her lane. There was a house there that charged them for her.

+1
When I were a 7yo lad in Liverpool in 1951, one of my tasks was to take Gran's 'accumulators' glass-cased lead-acid cells, to the chemists shop for recharging.

And referring to the thread where someone wanted to do things in the 'old way', don't forget to do everything by gas light. I'm as guilty as the next for rose-tinted reminiscences from time to time but there is a reason the world was black and white in those days !
DaveD

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

Posted by Hopper on 03/08/2017 13:28:52:

Hmm, I left the USA to return to living in Australia in 1992, the year SOD's graph starts. Coincidence? Common sense has been improving ever since??

Or could it be that American industry has all but dried up and blown away in the years covered by the graph? Hence fewer people working in electricity-ridden industrial environments?

Theres an interesting graph I found somewhere that perfectly demonstrated this trend, by showing how many emissions are being essentially "handed down" to developing nations, who do the industrial grunt work, and all the nastiness that comes with it and guess who topped the list?

yes, all the formerly great industrial nations. France, Germany, UK/US. We don't have to bear the guilt, because we can make all those misfortunates take it on for our money?

Michael W

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

We should be worried that we are defeating natural selection, the stupid should die so that the clever can breed and improve the species

Mike

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

Posted by Mike Poole on 04/08/2017 23:58:31:

We should be worried that we are defeating natural selection, the stupid should die..

Mike

They could start with all those Oxford and Cambridge grads..

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

…………the clever can breed and improve the species…………

…….They could start with ……… Cambridge grads..

Happy to help.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Having lived in Oxford for the last 50 years I have observed that being clever and having common sense do not necessarily go together and sometimes would seem to be mutually exclusive. Maybe I should have said those those with common sense rather than clever.

Mike

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