Memories

whisky-dave brought next idea :

Sorry, no - they had a pilot flame and a time-clock which opened a valve. Sometimes the timer would stick, so a smart kick at the base would un-stick them :-)

Really? Not sure about that, you could still go in and pick them up for pence. I do recall the bad batch of Tesla bulbs that were flooded into the country from Russia, they had not cropped the wires correctly and the tended to either blow the fuse or the filament holding wires shorted out and that blew the fuse as well. Get what you pay for exactly! Brian

Max Demian brought next idea :

I remember sugar being sold loose in a dark blue paper bag from the Co-op, they had a fancy way of folding the top, so it would not spill out.

No, but I do remember some places being lit by gas. Woolworths stores had back up lighting that ran on gas. These looked a little like some alien spacecraft, made of translucent globe and dish with what looked like a loo chain hanging down. During the 3 day week these came back into use in many stores.

Also, many caravans had gas lighting until efficient invertors for lighting came along. There was a characteristic smell and also a kind of greenish light and lots of water in the are, not to mention the need for ventilation!

Brian

Yes, with a very famous now dead UK singer in them. Apparently he got some of his first breaks through but adverts for Woolworths and on their embassy record label.

No need to name him I'm sure, and he did their ads right up till the end, when he was famous. Brian

Don't know but my mother told me it was to keep the moisture out of the packet. It seems not to have worked for mice though. Brian

half-life of about 12 years, I've got several GTLS vials (from el-reg keyrings) right here, still glowing reasonably after about 20 years

I know a wonderful electric shop in North Wales that still does that. The fitting is on the wall behind the counter where the public can't reach it.

I vaguely remember you could buy 'rough service' bulbs for inspection lamps which stood up to rough handling surprisingly enough!

No-one ever suffered any ill effects from them.

Yes I do remember gas lamps, early 60s, I would have been about 7?8. Dont remeber the man with the ladder shouting the time (I think he only came round occasionally to replace the mantles, they came on automatically as far as I recall. I do remember the shouting of the newspaper seller selling the sports results edition of the Evening News on Saturdays. Pink paper, my uncle Alf when visiting always bought a copy.

You still can rough service incandescent lamps if you want. It was an easy loop hole in the "ban" of incandescent lamps.

There seems little point in them now that LED lamps are so cheap. And the plastic LEDs bounce when you drop them:-)

:-)

Just before your Mother gave you a good hiding?

They still exist in a couple of places because they look nice ,usually tourist areas in big cities.

An exception is a small place called Throop which is an out of the way settlement on the edge of Bournemouth well off the visitor trail for that area. This still has a lot of gas lamps some out in a lane amongst fields, I beloved the reason they survived is that Bournemouth corporation never wanted to spend any money on upgrading the lights to electric in this outpost of theirs and kept putting the decision off, then one day they found that they had been listed and now have to keep them as gas.

Old site but nothing much had changed when we passed by a couple of years ago.

GH

I've just read through this thread, and I can remember the bulb tester, and the X-ray machine. Here's a couple more things you may remember.

A valve tester, in the radio/TV shop. It had a wide variety of bases, and a selection of (paxolin?) sheets perforated and inserted into the machine presumably to set the voltages.

Lifting the dial-less phone and asking the operator for the number.

That was a later version of the AVO valve tester. On earlier ones you set all the voltages manually, by looking at a chart.

You can still buy them.

But there was a loophole - 'special purpose' bulbs were permitted. So the energy saving reason for the ban was defeated by allowing rough duty bulbs which were less efficient than the banned standard bulbs.

... which likely never existed in the first place.

(Yes, yes, I know CRLs and LEDs are more energy efficient than incandescents, but they also cost a great deal more to make, and don't last as long as promised.)