Early domestic electricity.

[DHutch]

18 hours ago, Athy said:

...and later than that in France. In 1972, while living over there, I blew up my record player when I took it to a friend's party a few miles away and plugged it in, not realising that the voltage there was much higher than it was where I lived.

That's quite mad, and presumably slightly unusual even for France on its time? Certainly as I understand it the UK had unified on 240vac at 50Hz by then?

 

16 hours ago, Pluto said:

The following is a chronology I compiled 25 years ago for a booklet about Padiham Power Stations in East Lancashire...

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting reading all the available information, but quite a challenge to fine a condensed summary of relevant notable events. 

[Boater Sam]

Single core cable is not only recent, most lights wiring was in 1044, single 0.044" copper strand.

Snapped easily which is why the better jobbers used 3029, higher current rating too.

[DHutch]

14 hours ago, jonesthenuke said:

It may help to know who lived in the house. My grandparents had electricity installed in their house in the early 1930s, much earlier than the rest of the local villages, as my grandfather worked at the local coal mine and the mine supplied the power. Perhaps there was a similar issue on your case?

As yet I don't know for sure who commissioned the build. From the Wirral archive team I understand the initial planning application is dated 1902 to a name we as yet know little about. There is then reference to the owner, detailed in the 1911 census as an Merchant, else where as am American Provisions Merchant, from Berkenhead (and son of a Silk merchant) living with his Family inc mother in-law and the house servants, he is know to have been living there in 1907/8 as there are correspondence to him regarding the sewers attached to the original planning documents but this leaves a gap of around 5years. 

In 1916 he died and th house passed to his Son, previously living elsewhere locally, who went on to become a politician who lived there until his death in 1965. The house was the split, being bought by the owner previous to us about 20years later in the early 80's. 

 

More than that as yet we do not know in terms of who they knew and what access they would have had to electrical supply at the time. Other than Noctorum being an area of large Merchant houses built Inthe late Victorian and early Edwardian era

 

I have found record of Craven Street Electric Power Station "1896 Electricity generating station in Bentinck Street opened. 5 miles of cable were laid to supply 94 consumers." Bentinck Street is around 1.5miles away. Then another document, link below, details extension to Noctorum at the turn of the century. 

Mere Hall 'home of Liverpool lawyer Sir John Gray was built in 1882' is also nearby and is large enough I expect to have generating systems if not from new. However maybe it was simply connected as above. 

 

Link re: Craven Street. 

http://manweb-remembered.co.uk/Sep 64.pdf

 

Daniel

[Derek R.]

23 hours ago, Athy said:

...and later than that in France. In 1972, while living over there, I blew up my record player when I took it to a friend's party a few miles away and plugged it in, not realising that the voltage there was much higher than it was where I lived.

I wonder if Athy's record player was switched to 110V AC? Many items had a switch to accept 110V or 240V, and it appears France used to run 110V until some time in the sixties when they changed (can't find a definitive reference). Where were you living in 1972 Athy? Maybe there were regional variations.

 

Electric shaver outlest in bathrooms were restricted to 110V at one time (still so?), and all electrical equipment on building sites use portable transformers (always yellow) to go from 240V to 110V (unless I'm well behind the times on that). Doesn't answer Dan's query though.

[Athy]

2 hours ago, Derek R. said:

I wonder if Athy's record player was switched to 110V AC? Many items had a switch to accept 110V or 240V, and it appears France used to run 110V until some time in the sixties when they changed (can't find a definitive reference). Where were you living in 1972 Athy? Maybe there were regional variations.

 

.

You are quite correct, it had a switch to change from 110 volts to (I think) 220 volts. I lived in Rodez in the Aveyron, a mainly rural area in the South of the Massif Central, which probably would not have been in the forefront of technological progress - I remember, for example, that the whole town of some 20,000 people had only two telephone boxes, one outside the town hall and the other at the railway station.

Edited January 1, 2019 by Athy

[Bee]

I think parts of Bristol had 110v until the early 1970's

[Pluto]

The archive at the Science & Industry Museum in Manchester should have some relevant electrical supply material, and you can arrange a visit from this page https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/researchers/research-and-study

[ditchcrawler]

7 hours ago, Boater Sam said:

Single core cable is not only recent, most lights wiring was in 1044, single 0.044" copper strand.

Snapped easily which is why the better jobbers used 3029, higher current rating too.

Yes we never used it for that reason, always 3029.

 

[DHutch]

3 hours ago, Derek R. said:

I wonder if Athy's record player was switched to 110V AC? ...

 

Electric shaver outlest in bathrooms were restricted to 110V at one time (still so?), building site transformers....

Makes sense, even in this day and age i know of a few times said switch has been mistakenly switched with significant consequence. Presumably retained for the US market, although increasing devices are auto switching smps.

Most shaver sockets I've seen have both 110 & 240vac takeoffs, via an isolating transformer. Site 110v is still very common although I believe especially on the continent 230/240v with RDC is slowly displacing it. 

 

1 hour ago, Bee said:

I think parts of Bristol had 110v until the early 1970's

Which is very interesting. Presumably 110v was one of the more common localised standards used, and hence look a lot longer to be displaced by the now uniform voltage. Obviously in America they still predominantly have 110v although as part of that 220 is distributed and hence I believe often available.

 

Daniel

[DHutch]

1 hour ago, Pluto said:

The archive at the Science & Industry Museum in Manchester should have some relevant electrical supply material, and you can arrange a visit from this page https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/researchers/research-and-study

Yeah, that looks interesting. We are due to go down to the Wirral archives at some point to look at the information they hold and have shared with us to data, planning applications, census and phone directories. Without going to mad it would be nice to have some copies of the most interesting parts of the houses history. Only issue is that they are only open office hours, so it would need to be a day of annual leave. 

 

I am however particularly excited by the information at Craven Street I have found (see 'focus on the Wirral' a few pages into the pdf above) apparently available in the area at the turn of the century. This could well have been out power supply. There are photos of the building in 2013 so it may well still stand. 

 

 

Daniel

[jonesthenuke]

Do you have any photos of the house/street in the early 1900s? It may show overhead power cables?

 

[DHutch]

5 hours ago, jonesthenuke said:

Do you have any photos of the house/street in the early 1900s? It may show overhead power cables?

 

No, I've not found (or searched in detail) for any photos of the area but it's on the list. Even if it was photos of the nearby streets in the village than our own it would be very interesting. 

 

In the above PDF (Manweb sept 1964) it says in 1948 nearly half the customers where on DC but since been converted to AC but I don't which half we where in obviously. 

As yet I've found very little about the Craven/Bentinck Street Electric Power Station however later on they linked from Birkenhead over to Wallasey, which was built in 1928 and I've found and excellent document on the setup there where they where generating three-phase at 6600 volt. 

 

Link; http://manweb-remembered.co.uk/WallaseyElectric1928.pdf

 

Daniel

[GUMPY]

On 01/01/2019 at 07:53, Derek R. said:

I wonder if Athy's record player was switched to 110V AC? Many items had a switch to accept 110V or 240V, and it appears France used to run 110V until some time in the sixties when they changed (can't find a definitive reference). Where were you living in 1972 Athy? Maybe there were regional variations.

France until fairly recently had two systems one was 380v wye so you end up with 220v between live and neutral.

The other is 220v delta where there is no neutral but you take power between two phases again 220v however if you connect this system between live and earth, which you shouldn't do, you get a voltage between about 85v and 130v. The Olympia theatre in Paris had delta power until the 1980's.

There used to be the odd venue in Belgium that was delta as well, as far as I know the only remaining venue with delta power is Chateau Neuf in Oslo everywhere else is now 380v wye.

 

 

Wye is also known as star

Explanation is here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power

[Chris Williams]

Where I lived as a kid, we had no 'leccky, but the Mill House opposite had a generator run off the mill turbine. Presumably DC.

An old boy I worked with in Reading lived in an old house that had electric long ago.  He said there were two copper strips laid on two joists and the power was taken through that.   Frightening.  Probably 110v DC.

Reading Tramways generated at 500v DC for the trams. "The station was also used to power the Town Hall and supply the houses of some of the people in charge of the Corporation".  At 500 volts ???

[Ronaldo47]

The 500V DC supply would almost certainly have been a "thee-wire" system with an (earthed)  centre tap, providing two 250V circuits for lighting etc. 

 

I have an almost complete GEC catalogue for 1893 and 2 of the 4 volumes of the 1911 issue. In 1893, internal wiring  either used wooden suface trunking with two grooves (one for each conductor)  and a decorative capping, or a then-new  flexible conduit made of bitumen-impregnated papier-mache, terminated with brass ferrules. Fittings used various diameters of the standard 26tpi brass thread (1/2" preferred), but a range of adaptors to gas pipe thread was available. A range of motor- generator sets suitable for domestic premises was offered, as was a comprehensive range of luminaires and lamp bulbs, electric kettles, irons, glue pots, etc. The highest voltage was around 120V, AC or DC. Several types of mains plugs and sockets (then called "wall.plugs") were available, rated in terms of 5 or 10 "lights" rather than amps. They seem to have been a fairly recent introduction, as the catalogue goes into some detail explaining what they are and how they can be used. As well as plugs with 2 round pins, there were two different coaxial designs which could best be described as large versions of the modern Belling-Lee  coax TV plug and the various modern low voltage connectors where the plug has a metal sleeve and a hollow metal tip. 

 

In 1911 the wooden capped  conduits were still available, now supplemented by a range of metal conduits, including heavy screwed and light clamped. Fittings such as  lamp sockets were now available either with the 26tpi brass thread or gas thread, suggesting that gas pipes were widely used as conduit. Motor generator sets were now available with voltages of up to 240V. The huge range of light fittings occupies almost an entire 1 1/2" thick volume on its own. The  coax plugs had gone, replaced by a range of 2 pin plugs now rated in amps ( 3, 5, 15 and higher). Many pages of cable types. Earthed plugs only available in heavy  industrial versions. 

 

My first house, built 1926, was apparently originally lit by gas as mains electricity didn't reach the area until the 1930's.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Ronaldo47
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