I had one of these for my tape recorder. We had a mix of 15A and 5A plugs but visited people with 13A, so it was useful if bulky. I was never entirely convinced that it was safe but I assumed the low current involved would make it okay.
It was once possible to buy replacement coiled elements for radiant fires. You simply removed the failed one, used a piece of string to get the length and stretched the new one to suit. My dad told me that in his college days (1930s) they heated a room by simply suspending such an element from the mantelpiece.
Mind you, his mains electric soil sterilisation kit was a bit of an eye opener - wooden box, metal plate at each end, fill with soil, add water until ammeter reaches desired level, leave to simmer. I can smell it now. I still have the gardening book with full instructions for its construction and operation.
Chris
Electric kettle? Washing machine?
But then my mother did tend to get her way. ;-)
vacuum cleaners were in the ONS's basket of goods for the prices index in the 1940s; washing machines weren't added until the mid-1950s.
What the ONS or whatever decides is going to lag reality by some time. Bit the same as the number of sockets a new build has. We had a washing machine long before a fridge. An AEG twin tub. Perhaps you're too young to remember, but doing the washing (and ironing) for a family was a long hard day's work. A washing machine made a big difference.
My house was built as recently as 1963 (as a replacement for a cottage on the same plot), though to a more traditional 1930s design (small kitchen, outside toilet as well as an upstairs bathroom, no central heating).
When we bought it it was still less than thirty years old. As far as I can remember, there were only ten 13A sockets in the entire place. There are now forty-seven of them (including a couple in the garage).
Have you read accounts of the way surveys of household expenditure were carried out in the 1940s and 1950s? I have and they lead me to suggest that you are right if by "some time" you mean a year or two at most.
I remember it well thanks. I also remember that only around 15% of households had a washing machine by the end of the 1950s.
I also remember that a washing machine only required one socket to be available in one room. A vacuum cleaner needed sockets in more than one
- including upstairs rooms where there might previously have been none.
Exactamunto. The late 1950s were when a bit of a kitchen rewire happened to allow a washing machine and I think a fridge. Electric kettles and fridges and washing machines were very 1960s As was a family car. And a rented TV. And, finally, gas central heating.
just 6 off 13A sockets in your house.... wow...
there are 60 double sockets in my house alone.....
Are you counting 2-gang as one or two? If the former. We definitely have at least 92 in a normal 3-bed semi, with a conservatory, a garage and a shed ... and there's still not one where you want them or all the closest ones are in use!
Our first house - which was part of a divided house (division done in 1947) had 4 power points - one in the kitchen and one in each bedroom.
Cant remember how many I put in here. Probably getting on for a hundred and quite a lot of switched 5A for lights
Don't have that many - but we have 27 network sockets!
Oh, two. Definitely two. There are still three (bedroom) single-gang sockets, albeit all fitted with new front ends. They were never in very useful locations to start with.
:-)
I remember one house we lived in (when I was a boy). It had obviously been built before domestic electricity supply was a "thing".
The supply was external surface-wired at ground floor ceiling height all the way down both sides of the street, with the individual 5A connection to the fusebox and meter just inside the front door fanlight.
The house had three rooms on the ground floor. The front room had a 5A
3-pin switched socket installed at about 4 feet off the floor. So did the room behind that (and the TV aerial cable came inside alongside that one). In the ramshackle kitchen was a three pin 15A switched socket. The main fuse, though was a 5A ceramic holder and replaceable wire. Someone had been just a bit too clever in providing that 15A socket, which we had no plugs to fit.There were no socket outlets on the first or second floor. The bedroom on the second floor (the house was taller at at the front than at the rear) didn't even have a light fitting.
But I refuse to be bitter...
I hadn't ealier included the 7 double gang sockets in garage or the 7 double gang outdoor sockets so that makes 74 double gaang scokets for the whole property.
I also have 32 double gang multimedia wall plates each with 2 off ethernet and two off co-ax cables carrying fm, dab, Freeview, freesat and proper real satellites giving a total of 64 ethernet ports and 64 co-ax sockets.
Pfft. We have Wi-Fi. ;-)
Tim
I just had short leads with 13A sockets on one end and various plugs (including Wylex) on the other.
Bill
There used to be purchase tax on things like washing machines and this was always being used to 'control' inflation by Labour.
Was there a big change to purchase tax in the mid 1950's after the Conservatives were in power ?
Like at the bottom of the wall (apart from kitchen), or in the skirting board. Just where you don't want them when you get to the age when bending down and straightening up again requires a bit of advance planning.
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