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Things that used to be common place in people’s homes

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najaB

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Slide rules. People are more likely to have heard football commentators talking about them than maths teachers...
Had one up until fairly recently. Never did quite get the hang of using it though. I had more joy with log tables.
 

Master Cutler

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Slide rules. People are more likely to have heard football commentators talking about them than maths teachers...
I'll have you know, I've still got my British Thornton slide rule from my pre-calculator drawing office days.
Agree though that it's not something found in modern homes, just me being sentimental.
 

Bevan Price

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Servants?

I mean, everyone seems to have them in period TV shows.
That reminds me of the tale about a posh kid told to write a school essay imagining what it was like to be a poor family.
Amongst his comments was (allegedly) "Even the butler was poor". Obviously totally out of touch with reality, thinking that even poor families could afford to pay staff..
 

Gloster

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Obviously totally out of touch with reality, thinking that even poor families could afford to pay staff..
But one does not pay the staff: faithful old retainers continue to work out of loyalty. One may tip them occasionally or provide them with some left-over grouse at Christmas, but they know not to demean themselves by asking for something as sordid as money. I mean, they are not tradesmen.
 

Master Cutler

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But one does not pay the staff: faithful old retainers continue to work out of loyalty. One may tip them occasionally or provide them with some left-over grouse at Christmas, but they know not to demean themselves by asking for something as sordid as money. I mean, they are not tradesmen.
Yes, Filthy Lucre should never soil the relationship between a Gentleman and his man servant.
 

DelW

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I'll have you know, I've still got my British Thornton slide rule from my pre-calculator drawing office days.
Agree though that it's not something found in modern homes, just me being sentimental.
Likewise, I still have the British Thornton P221 Comprehensive that I bought in my first term at university. Four-function calculators were just becoming available but would have cost a term's grant or more.

I've got about twenty slide rules altogether, quite a few collected from colleagues who were retiring and clearing their desks. Every now and then I use one for a calculation just to keep my brain active.

In one job, I used to go to meetings where we discussed sizes and volumes of cylindrical storage tanks. Using a slide rule with a pi/4 marking on the cursor, I could get an approximate answer (which was all that was needed) much quicker than colleagues using calculators.
 

Master Cutler

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Likewise, I still have the British Thornton P221 Comprehensive that I bought in my first term at university. Four-function calculators were just becoming available but would have cost a term's grant or more.

I've got about twenty slide rules altogether, quite a few collected from colleagues who were retiring and clearing their desks. Every now and then I use one for a calculation just to keep my brain active.

In one job, I used to go to meetings where we discussed sizes and volumes of cylindrical storage tanks. Using a slide rule with a pi/4 marking on the cursor, I could get an approximate answer (which was all that was needed) much quicker than colleagues using calculators.
Be worth something one day.
Mine’s the P271 Log-Log version.
 

PG

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We had the Encyclopaedia Britannica, we weren't a rich family so they can't have been that expensive, my parents couldn't afford to have the heating on much, I spent a lot of my childhood lying underneath a radiator trying to get warm!
Buying the Encyclopaedia Britannica was probably why they couldn't afford to have the heating on!

Although harder to do, you'd have been warmer lying above the radiator - heat rises... :D
 

birchesgreen

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Buying the Encyclopaedia Britannica was probably why they couldn't afford to have the heating on!

Although harder to do, you'd have been warmer lying above the radiator - heat rises... :D
No it was on low that was the only place you could feel any heat!
 

eoff

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I currently have about 400 First Class stamps. I bought them when they were 70p each, they're now 85p. I use a lot of them, but that supply will probably last me a year or two.
I purchased 200x 1st and 200x 2nd in April 2012 when the prices were 46p and 36p, I'm about to run out of the second class ones. The prices keep going up and long gone are the days of multiple collections and deliveries per day.
 

PeterC

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On rather than in the home but, where electricity or power comes from an overhead line, there is no longer a bracket with insulators connected to the side of the house. I remember the phone line at my childhood home being connected to a pair of white(ish) ceramic pot insuators.
 

Energy

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DIN sockets and MIDI are both relative newcomers. For signal standards, RS-232 and 20 mA current loop are older and still in common use (though not domestically). For connectors, RCA/phono are 1930s. The real survivor is the 1/4" jack plug, which has been in its current form since about 1900.

To add to the original list, SCART connectors. Horrible things. The only cables that were capable of unplugging themselves.
XLR cables are still incredibly common today, being used for microphones. BNC is even older and still very common in broadcast. Neither of these would be used domestically though. SCART is a pretty horrible connector and rarely shows up today, did have the excellent feature of auto switching though.
 

Energy

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BNC was used in high end HD equipment in the very early days.
Yep, it also used to be used for CCTV (although thats now mainly Power-Over-Ethernet). HDMI is by far the most common for consumers now.
 

dgl

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On rather than in the home but, where electricity or power comes from an overhead line, there is no longer a bracket with insulators connected to the side of the house. I remember the phone line at my childhood home being connected to a pair of white(ish) ceramic pot insuators.
Still is in some areas possibly, although where overhead lines are used the connection from the pole to the house will be in insulated cables nowadays though the pole to pole wiring may still be uninsulated, I know a lot of the wiring in Crewkerne uses uninsulated cables between the boles rather than the more modern ABC.

Another thing which is now quite uncommon is kettles that actually use a kettle lead (I forget what the IEC C designation is) and audio equipment that used rectangular two pin power connectors.

and lastly USB ADSL modems, replaced by modem routers.
 

Energy

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Another thing which is now quite uncommon is kettles that actually use a kettle lead (I forget what the IEC C designation is) and audio equipment that used rectangular two pin power connectors.
Kettle leads are still very common in electronics though, both in home and in more specialised areas (such as sound equipment).
and lastly USB ADSL modems, replaced by modem routers.
ADSL is pretty much gone now having been replaced by VDSL, which itself is slowly disappearing due to the fibre rollout.
 

dgl

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Kettle leads are still very common in electronics though, both in home and in more specialised areas (such as sound equipment).

ADSL is pretty much gone now having been replaced by VDSL, which itself is slowly disappearing due to the fibre rollout.

Yes, I have many devices with "kettle" leads, including keyboards, computers, printers Etc. My organ also used to be fitted with the 2 ping rectangular variant until I replaced it with a "kettle" socket, although these aren't kettle leads as they are the high temperature variant with the notch in the plug.
 

Ediswan

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Kettle leads are still very common in electronics though, both in home and in more specialised areas (such as sound equipment).
Mostly these are C13, which as noted above, will not actually suit a kettle. Kettles require C15.
 

Bevan Price

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XLR cables are still incredibly common today, being used for microphones. BNC is even older and still very common in broadcast. Neither of these would be used domestically though. SCART is a pretty horrible connector and rarely shows up today, did have the excellent feature of auto switching though.
SCART is still in regular use - my most recent digi-recorder uses SCART to connect to the TV, and it is only just over a year old.
 

najaB

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SCART is still in regular use - my most recent digi-recorder uses SCART to connect to the TV, and it is only just over a year old.
That's somewhat interesting since, AFAIK, SCART only carries analogue signals so I thought it would basically have died when analogue TV died.
 

21C101

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Desktop PCs. Pretty much everyone I know uses laptops and/or tablets, unless they've got a Mac.
Wden my last desktop pc expired I got a small box that hangs on the back of the monitor and does everything my desktop PC did.

Only real difference is that the operating system is on a small flashdrive but a 512 Gigabyte flash drive in the expansion port soon sorted that.

That's somewhat interesting since, AFAIK, SCART only carries analogue signals so I thought it would basically have died when analogue TV died.
It is still in use in my house to plug the model railway into the control panel!
 

swt_passenger

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Another thing which is now quite uncommon is kettles that actually use a kettle lead (I forget what the IEC C designation is) and audio equipment that used rectangular two pin power connectors.
What about the previous size of 3 pin kettle connector, the large round re-wireable free socket that you’d only usually see on an actual “kettle lead”. It’s quite a while since I’ve seen one of them...
 
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GusB

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What about the previous size of 3 pin kettle connector, the large round re-wireable free socket that you’d only usually only see on an actual “kettle lead”. It’s quite a while since I’ve seen one of them...
Jug kettles have been around for quite a long time now, but when I was young we had the traditional shaped kettle. I think it was a Morphy Richards, and it had one of those round plugs that you mention. It failed on a couple of occasions and in those days you simply went to your local electrical retailer to get it repaired, or to purchase the replacement parts.
 

Ediswan

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What about the previous size of 3 pin kettle connector, the large round re-wireable free socket that you’d only usually only see on an actual “kettle lead”. It’s quite a while since I’ve seen one of them...
Still around for commercial use it seems. The switch to C15/C16 for domestic use was a step backwards. The round connectors were a lot less fiddly to use.
 

swt_passenger

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Still around for commercial use it seems. The switch to C15/C16 for domestic use was a step backwards. The round connectors were a lot less fiddly to use.
I’ve just been searching online and they seem to be available but I didn‘t see a type or code anywhere, would they have had some sort of BS number?
 

Ediswan

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I’ve just been searching online and they seem to be available but I didn‘t see a type or code anywhere, would they have had some sort of BS number?
I found numerous images that appeared to show 'BS' followed by four digits. None were sharp enough to read the digits.

Maybe somebody here has an old kettle and can see what the BS number is.
 

adrock1976

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What's it called? It's called Cumbernauld
Regarding kettles, I can remember the days that when the element had worn out, it could easily be replaced.

Nowadays, you have to toss the kettle out and purchase a whole new one, which contributes to extra landfill waste.

Another small example of how the country has ended up in the terrible state it is in these days.
 
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