Can one still get pp1, pp4 and pp9 batteries by the way? PP1 were six volt press stud, pp4 round but 9 v press stud either end and pp9 big 9v for good portable radios. Also looking for the bijou battery since its used in a vintage torch. Brian
PP9s are still out there, think I saw one in wilkinson not too long ago. Halfords, ebay, amazon etc still have them.
PP1 & PP4 I've not seen in many years.
NT
Yes the Bijou was 3 v with two cells in a cardboard sleeve. Fatter than AA but shorter than c Then there were the pocket lamp batteries 4.5 v with brass strips and the
3v cycle lamp batteries with one on top and one on the side, and the lantern batteries with the springs on the top often used by schoolchildren with wire wool to start a fire. grin.Do you remember those big 1.5 cells used for lighting the gas? Brian
There were several different large 1.5v cells, more than was ever sensible. Many obsolete types can be found on ebay, amazon, and probably elsewhere. But cheap they are not.
NT
Or those large heavy 90v radio batteries with ?60 cells in series (or was it 120 cells in series-parallel, 10 x 12 - they were almost square) and all sealed up with bitumen and providing HT for the valves, and oblong flat batteries for the filaments, several 1.5 volt cells in parallel.
There's a danger of sounding like Maurice Chevalier but "yes, ah remember zem well". Eee lad, tell that to kids today and they won't believe thee.
1289 - but called a 3LR12 (and possibly other names) today.
People seem to be making lash-ups for those, so probably obsolete.
I have a moderately new torch that uses one of those. They are readily available. You can also get rechargeable ones, and my torch has a hole (filled with a rubber plug) so that it can be charged in situ.
Yes. I think it's all piezo these days.
My parents' gas fire had a battery holder, with a tube inside, that held one D-cell and a dummy or two D-cells. It started with one plus dummy when installed, but had to switch to two when we changed from town gas to natural gas.
SteveW
Someone I know well used to trespass on the main East Coast line during the late 1950 and early 1960s, looking for things to steal. One thing he found (by smashing a padlock) was a large number of very large 1.5V cells. They had screw terminals and were connected in series. They were black, rectangular, about 3" x 3" x 10". They were very heavy but the boy managed to carry a lot of them home, where he used them to power his spark transmitter.
Bill
Yes those are going back though. We had an old Alba portable with those inside. Actually the speaker was rubbish on that thing and the dial was in the handle. On off vol on one side band change on the other and an edge wise tuning. Seemed all modern at the time, sigh?
Hearing aids are interesting as well as some of them were valve, little flat brown things and a mercury battery for the filaments and a tiny ht battery. Brian
Yes well, I remember the crystal set... Brian
Yes why did we start calling batteries c and d and stopped calling them U11 and u2? All very confusing to me at the time. I also remember those little accumulators you could buy as well, they were very hand for model boats later on. Brian
Yes and when the power failed on the railways, none of the telephones worked.
Brian
I played with spark transmission for a while modifying an old door bell to make a very high frequency tone and then using tuned circuits to make it only perhaps cover half of medium wave. It of course very soon mutated into an electric shock machine using an old valve filament transformer backwards, a rectifier etc. Probably grossly unsafe but we all survived. Brian
even better were the big 1.5V cells we used to ppwer our model plane glwoplugs tp start em.
Designed to power the heaters of battery radios,
soon replaced with rechargeable lead acid 2.2v. 'hunks'
The influence of Tandy on the high street I think.
I remember batteries purchased from there (or got free - battery club) had the ANSI codes displayed, or equipment sold was spec'ed as requiring such.
U11 and U2? Do you mean "Baby Torch" [1] and "Standard Torch"?
[1] Actually 2 U11 size in a cardboard tube.
I've never heard the terms "baby torch" and "standard torch" but I can vaguely remember U11 (C), U2 (D), U12 (AA). I don't remember U16 (AAA) but maybe there weren't many devices that used sufficiently little power that a AAA would last long enough.
I wonder if the UK started using ANSI names (AA, AAA, C, D) to come into line with US conventions, realising that they could no longer hold out with their own UK-specific names, in the same way that film speeds are now always quoted in ASA (aka ISO) rather than DIN (German standard logarithmic scale).
I remember them as Ever-Ready products (that's what the local hardware shop sold) and coloured white and blue, labelled as SP11, SP2 and SP12 (standard zinc carbon) and coloured orange, labelled HP11, HP2 and HP12 (longer lasting).
Bike light IIRC.
Got one of those somewhere.
If that is the one I remember, my grandparents doorbell ran off one of those and the battery sat on the wood of the doorframe.
I don't know, but it is simpler if everyone uses the same.
SteveW
The Eveready 126, it was even labelled "bell battery" at one time. Originally it had all brass screw terminals later versions black conical plastic screw terminals. My first Scalextric set had a plate that you attached three of them using the terminals, used as a power supply, transformers at that time being quite expensive and having to be bought separately and not supplied as part of the set. Many a Xmas ruined by parents forgetting to buy the PSU.
Richard
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