A blast from the past

Someone on social media was asking what this was for.

Surprisingly you can still get switched ones, and also rewireable bayonet plugs (sold as lamp extensions!)

It certainly brings back memories, not seen these things for many years.

Remember my mate living in a dingy top floor bedsit, it was freezing so he used to plug a fan heater into the communal landing light pendant.

Landlord couldn’t understand why lighting fuse kept blowing !

Remember them well, surprising how much power you can get from a light socket. Noel.

Somewhere recently I saw a very old ad for either South Bend or Atlas lathes and the machine was plugged into the light fitting using one of these adaptors!

I got one for a colleague who wanted Christmas lights in his porch and didn't have a power socket there. My dad said they were really popular before the war when electricity was billed by the socket or light fitting, not by a meter (once he wired up a house and was told not to put a light fitting in the front bedroom as there was a lamp-post outside giving free light).

Does anybody still have the kind with a pull-cord to change outlets? I remember one in my bedroom as a child with an incandescent bulb in one side and a neon night light in the other.

Brian G

Fed from the 5A lighting circuit at 240V, power is 1.2kW - although fuses may carry quite a bit more current before (immediate) failure. 240V was the standard grid supply, along with wired fuses in their era.

I daresay I have a version of those, somewhere. They were handy for 500W IR heaters, for newly born/hatched offspring - back well into the 1950s. Three way square pin adapters and extension leads gradually displaced them.

You used to see electric irons plugged into lightbulb sockets. Happy days.

Electric blanket socket !

Dave Wooton,

You probably saw that add in a thread of mine a few years ago. Photo is in my Album under the Chennery Vee-Twin photos. Top row 3 rd from right.

Keith .

I think mine still does. I have not used it for more than 40 years. My elecric blanket was last used in the winter of 1978.

JA

Ah yes. With the shadows moving around in time with the motion of the smoothing iron.

Hi, I remember those switched two way adaptors, and our mum used to plug her iron into the switched side. I don't have one of those, but I do have a couple of bayonet plugs.

Now these are really old, the one on the left has No. 709 & Empire, moulded on the base, and the one on the right just has Empire Made moulded on its base. I probably found these in a box of oddments that my father had.

Regards Nick.

5 amp

H

I remember a friend’s mother plugging her electric iron into one of these splitters. In Leeds we were on 210 volts until the mid60s when a changeover to 240 v was carried out. All of our equipment was checked by YEB the Yorkshire Electricity Board. Some was upgraded, some replaced and the immersion heater was granted a 10 year warranty. It never failed!

Thanks Keith, yes it must have been in your Chenery album I saw it, actually says "plugs into lamp socket". Lamp sockets were made of sterner stuff in those days, I have visions of an old fashioned rewireable fuse glowing gently to itself in it's wooden fusebox!

Dave

I remember the trailing leads from light sockets too.

The only issue is that there is no earth connection, so running lathes, irons etc from same is at the user's risk!

Dave

It's amazing what you find in dad's odds box,I've got a few of those fittings. Back in the 60s my dad had a concrete double garage, dad was very handy being a maintenance engineer at Vauxhall motors would tackle any job but electrical was not his best talent. He installed the electrics for the garage, proper cable ,lights ,sockets the lot. Mum my sister and me use to say that sometimes we would get tingles from the taps especially when dad was in the garage, this went on for a few years, he never come across this as he was not in the garage. He got a electrician around for some internal work, he found that the garage had not been earthed correctly causing the tingling on the taps. I can't imagine the electrical accidents in those days though lack of proper maintenance and procedure.

Bob

I grew up in a Victorian mid-terrace. It had a consumer unit with two (rewireable) fuses, lights and sockets. My grandparents had bought the house in the late 1930s and it was then wired up by my uncle. It only had power sockets on the ground floor so if you wanted power for anything other than lights in the bedrooms these adapters were the only way and we used the type with pull cords. Two of the ground floor rooms only had one socket and I remember them being changed over from the old round pin sockets to the current type G. I don't think there were power sockets in all the bedrooms when it was sold in 2003.

Martin C

Hi Dave, I don't think my mum's iron even had an earth wire, but she had to have a new one shortly after the time I can remember it being plugged into the light adaptor. The new iron came with a wall storage plate, and had a three round pin plug, so couldn't be plugged into the light adaptor, so from then on had to be plugged into the only socket there was available. I can remember helping my dad, putting in a new twin and earth and a modern flat pinned socket in our front room, ready for when we had our first TV in 1963, as there wasn't any sockets in there.

Regards Nick.

Not strictly relevant but a work colleague of mine about 40 years ago decided to install an electric shower in his house. Found a convenient cable in the loft and joined his electric shower to it, couldn’t understand why the lights in the house dimmed when the shower was operated, the fusing arrangement consisted of rewritable fuses which were notorious for allowing very large current flow before they blew. I think a classic example of Darwin’s theory of evolution although he survived any catastrophic consequences. Dave W