Mains failure

[Andrew]

As seen on one of Michael Portillo's railway programs, whereas somewhere in east europe they lift all the carriages off the bogies and drop them onto new bogies for the onward journey.

[Andrew]

I'm sure Fred told us once on one of his industrial history programs.

[Andrew]

Brunel laid 7 foot gauge track but no-one copied him

[Andrew]

Nope, one half of Japan uses 50Hz and the other 60Hz

And voltage is 100V or 200V depending on where you are

[Andrew]

Like UK door sizes

[NY]

He probably had a "dee-MONster-ation" to illustrate it. (Listen out for his unique pronunciation of "demonstration" ;-)

[NY]

Tyre sizes are just plain silly. Not only are they a mixture of inches for the wheel size (and therefore the inside diameter of the tyre) and millimetres for the width of the tyre, but also the thickness of the tyre (OD-ID) is specified as a percentage of the width, rather than being an absolute measurement of OD or (OD-ID). Where did that percentage thing spring from? Its a cack-handed way of specifying the OD and or OD-ID.

It's as bad as imperial copper pipe measurement quoting the *inside* diameter of the pipe (with an assumption made for the wall thickness), when it is the *outside* diameter which is needed because that is what has to match the inside diameter of the compression or soldered fitting. Hence imperial and metric measurements of a pipe not only differ in units (which is just a simple 25.4 conversion) but also one includes and one excludes the wall thickness.

[charles]

but my point was that there isn't a world standard

[Max Demian]

Cross-ply were inches for both. I suppose the millimetres were introduced for the more "modern" radials.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Depends if you are designing for flow rather than convenience of assembly?

Pipe are made of different materials. A half inch outside diameter plastic pipe will have a different flow from a copper one.

[JNugent]

The "company fuse"?

There are still lots of houses of a similar description, so why not?

I take it the MK surface-mounted sockets are square pin 13A?

[Dave Plowman (News]

There were also totally metric tyres. TRX, IIRC. Brother had a 80s BMW with them. Soon changed the wheels on finding out replacement costs.

[Dave Plowman (News]

No. The leccy emergency crew arranged for a generator. They'd have just replaced the fuse if it had blown.

The fault appeared to be where the house supply cable connected to the street one - it was fixed very quickly once they'd made the hole needed. I'd guess replacing the cable into the house would have taken longer and needed more digging up? Although not very long - perhaps 4 metres or so. Could be they could just pull a new one through? If it's like mine, it appears to be fairly ordinary armoured cable which would be pretty strong.

I'd say not many with 80 year old lighting wiring left.

Yes - added in the 60s. I'm told.

[Scion]

Conversation between me and local fibre company:

LFC: "We've cabled your street. Want fibre to your house/cable TV/etc.?"

Me: "No thanks."

LFC: "Oh go on, it's really good, honest."

Me: "Our drive is concrete, how are you going to bury the cable?"

LFC (looks next door): "We can run the cable under your neighbour's lawn."

Me: "I don't think they'll agree to that."

LFC: "We'll do it when they're out."

[Jack Harry Teesdale]

They use armoured pvc concentric cable for house services these days, it's doubtful if it could have been 'pulled through'with the old one though.

[charles]

Very intersting, When, as a student (c1959), I was with the SESEB, drawings showed really old installations used concentric feeders.

[Jack Harry Teesdale]

What goes around comes around! The centre core is now solid with the wire armouring surrounding.

[JNugent]

Almost certainly because the Ampex Company - having received a couple of German Magnetophone machines after WW2 - set the industry standards for tape speed.

The original (for their required hi-fi purposes) was 60" ps. This was successively halved to 30"ps, 15"ps and 7.5"ps, with the ordinary R-R domestic 3.75"ps speed.

When the compact cassette system was designed, it ran at half of standard domestic speed, 1.75"ps. All of them were derived from the Ampex 60" speed.

[Fredxx]

The original German machines were 77cm/s https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Magnetophon#Magnetophon_K4 which is close to 15ips (76.2cm/s). Ampex effectively imperialised the speed, and the sub-speeds are derived from that.

[Fredxx]

Yes, I got the conversion wrong. Principle is the same.

I have known standards be dependent on result. It might have been the slowest speed with the head gap they used to get a response at 10kHz.

Or 7 was a lucky number?