Will some kind soul tell me whether I am correct in guessing that what is now refured to as a consumer unit is what I knew as a fuse box? If so, ehen did the name changes.
David
-- David Love Happiness is a way of seeing good in everything and everybody.
I think when we moved away from separate main switches, switch-fuses and splitter fuseboxes (usually in wood with glazed fronts, or cast iron) to a single unit incorporating main switch and all fuses.
Such a unit (also incorporating a cooker control switch) was marketed as a "Kitchen Control Unit" for new post-war housing in 1947, but I don't see a reference to "consumer unit" as such.
Long before that. Circa 1947 would be my guess, when BS 1363 and the ring circuit first came along. A consumer unit is the combination of a main switch (or main switch-fuse, as they usually were, pre-war) and a fuse box. Double-pole fusing was also the norm before WW2, leading to all kinds of dangers.
There was an article in a recent /Wiring Matters/ [1] on the origins of the BS 1363 and ring circuits, etc. This focusses on a report [2] published in 1944 which established much of the basis for wiring practices which are still with us sixty years later. The article refers to the report "mak[ing] proposals for single-pole fusing, a novel compact design of consumer control unit, the cooker control unit [etc., etc.]"
That would put the first use of the term "consumer (control) unit" at somewhere between 1942 (when the work started) and 1944.
[1]
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Post-war building study no. 11 - Electrical installations.
No, I think it was when one box with multiple fuses of different values replaced a collection of miscellaneous switch fuses - one for lighting, one for power, on for immersion etc. Part of the reason for the latter is that in the early days you paid different rates for lighting and power so had two meters.
I have never heard a non-electrician refer to any unit containing only fuses (rather than MCBs) as a consumer unit. It is invariably a fuse box, whether it contains one fuse or ten fuses, whether it has an isolator switch or not. IME, DIN rail = consumer unit, Wylex/MEM = fuse box.
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