Spoiled for choice (OT)

[John]

Thinking back to the olden days and remembering the excitement of being able to buy (electrical) plugs in white. Then along came rubber plugs - amazing!

Then changing sockets to white flush ones.

Putting a plug on my mother's iron so she didn't have to plug it into the light fitting.

Rocker switches - Wow - so modern.

A TV with a remote control (21 strand cable to it I believe).

My first house - I think I bought it because it had a Trimphone on a really long wire so that you could carry it into the lounge - wow - all phones used to be black and in a cold hallway.

I wonder how many jobs would have been saved if telephones had been freed from the Post Office monopoly earlier. (whilst we had a manufacturing capability)

Going to the Science Museum and seeing a door that opened as you walked up to it - Heavens! things would never get this fantastic

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Probably none. At least GPO phones were UK made.

[Owain]

Along with the exchanges.

And there were all those directory enquiry operators, not to mention the chap who turned the record over on dial-a-disc.

Telegraph boys on bicycles, the AA patrols saluted, and the banks all closed by half-past three.

Owain

[Owain]

I got given a red plug and red coily cable (from Habitat IIRC) as a present to 'make something with'

We had one too, they were more expensive than ordinary phones, and my parents had the bedroom extension taken out to save money.

And the Radio Times had (colour) printed after some of the programmes, because they were in colour.

Owain

[Tim S]

John wibbled:

The real progress was tweaking Duraplugs so you don't curse when you realise you forgot to thread the cable though the lid!

Now heading back to wood. Wonder when retro brown bakelite will be fashionable?

Toggles are back :)

I remmeber seeing those somehwere.

My first TV remote was a 4 foot stick and a push button telly :)

My uncle had an ultrasonic one which you could activate by a sharp clap.

Our 2nd BT phone was green and sat on a table in the hall - such luxury compared to having to stand by the old grey one that was nailed to the wall in an inconvenient place.

I remember when Tomorrow's World did a bit on computers that would interact with you via the phone and the keypad. I thought that was so cool. 10+ years of voice menus and automated bollocks when I call my credit card company later and I want to stab the computer though the head with steel knitting needles!

Tim

[Jules]

I'm slowly converting ours to black metal ones as I can't stand white switches, power sockets etc.

All toggles this side of the Atlantic :) I like the reassuring clunk noise they make...

I had one that was ultrasonic rather than wired or IR - could *just* hear the tones it made then, but bet I couldn't now (if I still had it)

I think the really old green ones (4xx series) before the 706 arrived are supposed to be quite rare these days (I've got one in black but with a green cord between phone and handset - sadly the green phone the cord came from had been left in the sun and was a total loss)

All that home-automation bollocks never did catch on, did it? Although I blieve you can phone your PVR these days with some setups and get it to record things for you that you forgot about before you went out, which does seem vaguely useful.

cheers

Jules

[Owain]

Neither did silver spandex, thankfully.

Owain

[R]

A pub not far from me that I frequent on occasion has the bar billiards light plugged in to a "Dubler" on the wall light fitting !.. Must be circa

1955 ish....... and so is the decor, landlord (Who I have known for 30 years) and the entire premises. It's fekin brilliant!

"One" has buzzing dimmers me-dear...so "Au Natural" to have that lovely buzzing in the ears when it's really quiet ;-)

Me dad had one..................Twas called me mum !

They used to be luminous as well

Blame the Guvmint !

Pah! Swot flunkys are for innit?

[Frank Erskine]

On Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:53:03 GMT, "The Medway Handyman" had this to say:

My first transistor radio was built to a design in 'Radio Constructor' by Sir Douglas Hall, in a polystyrene 'lunch box' sprayed internally with some naff blue paint to hide the solid-dielectric tuning condenser, the ferrite rod ærial and the reaction (or were they superregen?) controls.

Transistor stuff never had the charm of valve equipment though. From about 10 yrs old I used to just concoct assemblies of home-wound coils, SP61 (VR65) valves, a few odd other components, and a TV heater booster transformer (7/6d) for the valves - the HT was derived by directly rectifying the mains with a SenTerCel selenium rectifier or two. If I put the two-pin mains plug in the wrong way I'd get a severe belt when I touched the chassis made from an inverted Woolies baking tin so it was an incentive to take care.

None of this H&S stuff in those days, and I'm still (sort of) here...

The crates which they came in were a 6x5 'matrix' and I remember in 'reception class' trying to tell classmates how to multiply six by five to obtain thirty - they couldn't understand since they saw me pointing to one bottle twice...

Doh -

[Steve Walker]

You're right - we've enjoyed incredible progress in the last few generations.